Strangers When We Meet
by Gonch Ni
Summary: Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget. A four-part fic about kindness, sacrifice, scars, gentle hearts, and a summer love that changed two people and turned over generations of prejudice.
1. Wayfaring Strangers

**_Strangers When We M eet:_**

 _ **Author:** Nicky._

 _ **Rating:** Mature for sexual content in part three._

 _ **Disclaimer:** The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to Mr. Tolkien, and in part I suppose to Mr. Jackson as well. This is a non-profit work for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here. Credits go where credits are due :))_

 _ **Spoilers/Warning:** First person POV – third person POV – minor spoilers for BofFA/Hobbit ending – period-typical view of gender roles in society – canon-typical racism and prejudice – past underage extramarital sex and teen pregnancy – high-functioning alcoholism – poor parenting skills – feels – broken feels – talk of loss – talk of death – rubbish medieval medicine (my degree is neither bio NOR chem) – taking pride in your work – minor gore – sexual content in part three – part four post-Hobbit – it's not as bad as it sounds in the tags._

 _ **Pairings:** Thorin/OFC (Original Female Character), minor Bagginshield at the very end, because I'm a shipper and I couldn't not, Fíli &Kíli&OMC friendship and teenage shenanigans._

 _ **Summary:** Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget._

 _ **Story Notes:** This story is COMPLETE after months and months of collective hard work. It is a short fic that will contain four chapters, and it is pretty much the first WIP story that I have actually completed in the four years I have been an author in the fanfiction community. Yay for commitment…? I think I might've bitten off more than I can chew with this little monster; I've been sitting on these thirty five thousand words since early December and oh, my God. FINALLY! I find it fitting that I should finish it exactly a year later. It brings this journey to a close rather fittingly, giving it to the world on its anniversary. Anyway, I hope a year was worth it._

 _ **Forest ecosystem:** I have about 12 percent of a clue what lives in Middle-earth; wolves, horses, ravens, thrushes, etc., so I'm assuming the wildlife is relatively the same as ours. The flora, on the other hand, is another story, so I'll try to keep from naming much. Nevertheless, animals make numerous appearances so I'll be using real world animals, assuming the fauna is close to ours._

 _ **Chapter Notes:** Chapter features gore and medieval (slightly progressive for that time period but still entirely ineffective in this day and age) medicine, and considering I never took bio in school it's a hit-or-miss shot in the dark for me. I'm deeply sorry._

 _ **Special Thanks:** I'd like to profoundly thank _ onoheiwa _for your brilliant insight and support and help. This would not have turned out without you!_ onoheiwa _took the time to help make my work better and just, thank you, so much! Your help was amazing :))_

 _ **Face Claims:** You tell me. Should I give one, or shouldn't I? Do you want one?_

 _ **Story:** …_

* * *

 _STRANGER WHEN WE MEET_

 _Part 1 / Wayfaring Strangers_

 _"Verse. Chorus. Verse. I'm sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious."_

 _― Richard Siken, Crush_

* * *

Spring came early that year.

Days grew longer and coats grew shorter, and the winter melted into puddles of sludge that froze overnight; icicles shrunk, dripping from windowsills and rooftops; the woodlands came alive with the mating calls of its inhabitants. Wet flakes of snow settled on lashes and red cheeks yet, but the sun was warm again.

It was a year of early harvest and plentiful trade and, for many people of the town, a change that blossomed with the summertime flowering of the fields. It, too, would wilt for the coming frost that the late month of September brought upon; but for the season of the sun, that change heated the minds and spirits of six hundred people who grew to appreciate and later even respect a simple and penniless man of labor who did nothing more than anybody else: his best. Yet, it was his coming that carried with it a peace that would last generations to my settlement and I, a young girl at the time, could not appreciate what he had done for us all while he had lived and broke bread among my son's people. It was, foolishly, a blind mistake of mine, for the impressionable mind of hope often clouds perception to all but the object to which it clings.

Still, as all stories, this has a beginning, and this beginning was in the wet spring snow that crunched underfoot and trailed mud. Spring snow, stained crimson.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

I was at the table with a torn quilt draped over my lap, a needle in my hand, and a dying candle on the table, lighting the journals I was studying as I mended the cloth. My Edrig burst in through the door, the chopping axe clutched in his hands, startling me half to death, but before I could reprimand him he exclaimed,

"Ma! There are folk! Three o' them, small as I, armed, hurt; they are bleedin'!"

I set down my work, blew out the candle and commanded him to stay inside, then lifted my skirts and sprinted out into the clearing surrounding my home. The ground was a patchwork of fresh snow and hardened earth, but the faded grass field was fighting through the thin remainder of winter that clung to the village like a leech. There, on the southern outskirts of my little plot of land, collapsed upon a fallen pine, lay three children. The storms had been bad the past winter, worse than typically, and many of the trees had broken. It was quite a distance away, and my sight was not what it had been when I was a girl, so I could not make out much beyond that fact that all three were injured to some extent or another.

I ran to the tree line as one called something out, too far and muddled for me to make out, then again, louder,

"Help!"

Then I was upon them, and faltered at what I saw, coming up short, unsure how to proceed. Unsure whether to proceed at all or if it would be better to leave them for their troubles, point them to Loch, go inside my home and lock the door behind me.

They aren't children, I realized then, not even Men at all, or at the very least not men of my own race. Male, yes, but these are Dwarves – one large one and two smaller, though none of the trio are anything that could be called 'big'. The tallest cannot stand taller than Edrig, and he comes up to just about my shoulders. The other two are quite the size of ten year old girls, I thought.

Spring snow was fluttering from the sky, kissing our faces and meting on warm cheeks. I bit my lip and took a step back. Two had sat the third to lean back upon the fallen tree and his injuries were by far the worse: his face was sweaty and pale, skin a pasty yellow-green. He had dark rings under his eyes, but it was hard to tell if it was from lack of sleep or illness. Beside him the other two sat heaving; one completely engrossed in the injured one, clutching his hand and muttering and petting his head, the other hovering above them like a shield, a wall, a cliff. He was looking around with wild eyes, as if searching for something, and his focus came onto me as I swallowed and finally knelt in the wet snow beside them.

The first thing that came to my mind was that the dirt under me ruined my skirts, but that was like as not the wine in my belly speaking, and not my sound mind.

The second was that my hands were shaking, and ball them into fists that I might, I could not stop them nor the rapid beating of my heart in my ears.

The shorter Dwarf (a child perhaps?) was breathing shallowly – too shallowly. I pushed hard at the Dwarf who sat with the injured one's hand in both of his, and it was either his distracted state or lack of experience that came with youth that had him falling back: he was twice as heavy as Edrig.

"What are you doing? Unhand him!" he shouted.

"Fíli," the other barked, and the Dwarf closed his mouth.

I looked over the dark haired one, asking question upon question as to his condition, its length, its most recent effects. From the story they told depicting the ailment I was able to construct a hypothesis. Poison was the ultimate answer; it was in his blood, moving to his heart and stealing his strength quickly. He could hardly keep himself awake now.

"Loch is a quarter hour away from here," I told them, not looking at either of the other two. "Ye will find Master Carrig in the Town Hall. He can help ye there. It is downhill so the travel should not be troublesome overmuch."

Then I stood and brushed the snow from the skirts. It had melted and wet the wool, leaving a large dark spot all down the front, and the fabric heavy.

"A quarter… Miss, he can't walk a quarter minute!" It was the younger who said it; in tears, in panic, in despair. I bit my lip, looked between the three, kneeled back in the snow with trepidation, holding as safe a distance as I could from the other two.

The wound itself is superficial, hardly grazing flesh, I thought. It would heal on its own in close to a week, no stitches needed but… Poison. Infection. His shoulder is inflamed, swollen to the size of an apple, violet veins branching over his chest, down his arm. Bandits. Or Orcs. Either is a possibility in equal measure.

I can save the Dwarf, I thought. Take him to my home, clean him up, make an antidote, nurse him back to health as the illness burnt out of him. But that isn't my job. My job is to determine the extent of his injury and then have the Dwarf taken to Loch's healer to be treated under the care of a properly experienced man, in a clean medical area, with hundreds of books and scrolls to help. My job is to report to someone who knew what he was doing: a proper physician, not some girl from the woods outside of town, I thought.

… It had been a day and a half, I was told. The poison was Widow's Kiss, had to be, the symptoms were too close of a match for it to be anything else and…

… He should have fallen unconscious long ago, but Dwarf biology is different from that of Men. Has to be, otherwise they would not be so short, I thought.

I bit my thumbnail. Looked between the three. Back to my home. Back to the Dwarf laying at my knees and the two looking at me, pleading without word to help their dying friend, terrified and helpless. Back to my small home that had only room for two, and few valuables. I didn't live there alone. I had taken patients there many times, but this would require an overnight stay at the very least, in the place where my son and I slept.

… Loch is a one quarter hour's walk northwest of here, I thought, and he made it this far by some miracle as it were.

I looked back down at the Dwarf. He uttered something and the other smaller one was back at his side, hovering over him and petting his face.

"It's alright, Kee. I'm here. We're going to take care of you."

The Dwarf, Kee, made an indiscernible sound that may have been a word or a moan of pain. The other shushed him and stroke his hair and brow, sniffing, trying to smile, to give brave reassurance, to channel some of his strength.

They are children, I thought, they cannot harm you or your son.

I looked to my home, to the place where my son had spent the majority of his life, the place where we lived together. I lit a candle in the window every night; what would it say of me if I ran to town now? If I turned them away? They were Dwarves and could rob me blind of all of my valuables, few though they were, hurt me—hurt my son. They were wounded, struggling to walk. They were a greedy and selfish people with a complete disregard for anyone who wasn't them, violent, brutal cave-dwelling savages. They needed help.

I looked up from the boy under my arm to the older Dwarf, his eyes hopeful and desperate and tired; Help him, they begged, Save him.

"Help me get him up," I said, pushing to my feet and pulling him carefully by the arm. They hoisted him up and in a disoriented path stumbled back to my home, the home of my son, the place that was our sanctuary, the place that was always safe for us... The place that was always safe, period, because there was nothing more left to say after that word, nothing to add to discredit that one, simple fact, Dwarves or not.

Once inside I threw my arm across the table to clear it, spilling bowls of food and candles and journals to the floor.

"Take his clothes off!" I ordered, rushing about the house from cabinet to cabinet for supplies and potions and herbs and incantation scrolls as the other two started undressing him. Cloak, coat, vest, armour (armour!), tunic, undershirt; all came away with little care to their integrity. The tunic and undershirt were torn down the front once the mail shirt lay discarded on my kitchen floor.

My son helped me set up my materials, cleansed my equipment. I shoved a bucket in his hands and ordered him to get me water.

"Water – nae, Ma! I won't leave ye here alone with—"

"Get me the water," I barked. "And stay out o' the house when ye dae."

"Ma, I won't—"

"Edrig. Dae as ye're told. Is there not firewood for ye tae finish choppin'?"

Edrig cast a hard glare, chopping axe pointedly in hand, at the three Dwarves, but left the house without more protest. I turned to the Dwarves.

"Fetch me a rope or a belt; somethin' tae tie off his arm tae lessen the blood flow." I had to try to stop the poison from spreading any further, if it could be helped.

What happened was not what I was expecting to happen: I have done this before, and many times have received snaps and slaps for the orders. Things like, "'Fetch me', she tells us," and, "Next she be tellin' us tae cook her food and mend her skirts," and, "If she were my wife…"

What I got was a belt in my hand before the final word left me. For a long moment I was silent, staring at the straw haired Dwarf who handed me his belt, then focused back on cleaning the wound and the surrounding area while the other two held him down as he jerked and twisted. He cried and cursed and then did it again using words I could not understand.

"Is it wise that you perform this procedure?" the black haired one asked.

"The lad is dyin'," I said, the words muffled by the belt between my teeth. I took it from my mouth and began wrapping it around his shoulders. "The village is too far away, yer friend said it himself. He won't make the trip."

"You are a woman. I hardly imagine you have had proper training and research, apprenticed under a master or at the very least have sufficient experience in the field."

"Aye, I am and nae, I didn't. Ye have brilliant observation skills, ye dae."

"That is a fact, lass, not an insult," he said. I hummed but didn't respond, because what could I say to it that wouldn't be a lie?

"Put pressure here," I instructed, letting the smaller of the two press the wine-drenched cloth over Kay's shoulder in my place as I turned to the salves and antidotes.

The Dwarf on my table choked and coughed and tried to spit out the potion I mixed so I covered my hand over his mouth and nose until it went down and stayed down. He gagged but didn't regurgitate.

"Tear these intae long halves," I commanded to anyone who would take over the job as I slathered the other, a dark green salve that was thick and pungent as hot piss, over Kee's skin. The older of the two tore three bandages in half lengthwise and handed the strips to me one by one. The lad jerked and fought the hands keeping him down as I tied off the clean cotton, his face reddening and his breath growing more shallow and hitched. Tears ran down the sides of his face and disappeared into his hair.

The poison I battled now, the infection could wait until he made steps to recovery. I didn't know enough to be absolutely sure that if I fought the infection as well, it would not do further damage in contrast with the antidote; had neither the means nor opportunity to have learned enough.

I gave him something to put him to sleep. Three drops in a cup of water that he coughed and sputtered and nearly puked over me, but it went down and he stopped moaning and gasping at the burn in his shoulder. Shortly thereafter he stopped moving.

"Kíli? Kíli! Can you hear me? You have to open your eyes! What did you do to him?" the smaller accused, turning to look at me with murder in his face as he shook his friend by the shoulders, his voice cracking and breaking and thick. Is eyes and face, too, were misty and drenched with tears.

"He is in pain now, and it will get worse tonight, tomorrow. Until the poison burns out o' him. I gave him a potion from the flowers of sleep tae help him through the worst o' it. Don't wake him," I told him as I unrolled a casting scroll and found the prayer I needed.

The young Dwarf turned back to his sleeping friend, brushing his hair and murmuring for him to wake up and look at him, to be all right. I placed my hands, one on Keelee's (Kiely? Killey?) brow and the other on his wounded shoulder, and began to murmur in the old tongue of the Northmen.

"O, Great Maker o' the world, our spirits sing tae ye tae hear our plea. O, mòr 'dèanamh an t-saoghail , ar spioradan seinn thu a 'cluinntinn ar n- ùrnaigh. Our ask is humble, but our hearts despair. Tha ar n- iarraidh 'S e iriosal , ach ar cridheachan eu-dòchas. As we hold our love he fades. Mar a tha sinn a 'cumail ar gràdh e a' sìoladh. He dwells in the land of the Eternal Night, his strength stolen and his heart weakened. Tha ea ' còmhnaidh ann an tìr na h-oidhche shiorruidh , a neart agus a ghoid chridhe lagachadh. But his spirit cries strong tae ours. Ach ighidh e spiorad làidir a rinne. We reach intae the Night for him but, we prey tae ye, Creator o' Creators, tae guid him home, tae not steal him away in his youth, tae let his days be long and many—"

"Mahal made him, and Mahal will unmake him, at the time that was charted in the Stone. We pray you grant him courage to brave the Night and strength to wade it home." It was the dark haired one who completed the plea. He did not tear his watchful gaze from the boy when he said to me, "I know that prayer."

I nodded solemnly, "It is old. There are few whom are not of the North ken it."

"There are few left of the Northmen know it," he corrected.

"It is the dying who have most to offer to the world." The smaller one stood beside me, holding Keelee's hand in both of his. I placed my hand upon his shoulder, feeling him flinch in pain. "He dwells in the darkness o' his weakened spirit. Call tae him." Call him back.

He did that, muttering encouragement under his breath, stroking Keelee's hair and face, pleading with him to be a little stronger, fight a little harder, return to him.

"You're strong. You have always been. Stronger than even me. Like mother. Strong and persistent and stupid, and you don't know when to stay down. Don't stay down, Kee." His words were swallowed by tears but his grip was strong and sure and faithful in the way only one who had kenned death could have.

My son came back with water and I sent him back outside, bringing the bucket to the foot of the table and dipping a cloth into the cold, washing away the sweat and illness that pushed out of Keelee's skin. The blonde one asked to do it by himself and I let him climb upon a chair on his knees and finish for me. It was a pitiful sight; one in a death sleep on my kitchen table, another hovering atop him, pleading him awake, the third trying to be larger than life, to stand vigilant and powerful despite his weakness and fatigue and injury. A tiny family cracking and breaking into fragment like the dry leaves of autumn.

I wiped my hand on my apron, red and brown from the blood and dirt, and shifted uncomfortably, feeling guilty for disturbing the long silence that had settled like a blanket about my home.

"I should look tae ye, also," I said, gesturing with my hand. "And… I can take yer things, if ye like. Coats and… all else that ye don't need indoors," I added, when it occurred to me that I had three strangers in my home, two of whom, while battered and beaten and half asleep themselves, were armed for a war. Swords, axes, knives—the wilderness was never a safe place to be unarmed, but there was self-defence and then there was a mad killer on a rampage and they were blurring that line. My only really weapon, a hatchet for chopping firewood, was with Edrig, and I would not call to him.

I couldn't help but stare, and I was sure I looked at frightened as I felt, at the sheer number of weapons that I suddenly couldn't help but notice… and my Edrig was just outside, a young boy who would rush in at the first sign of danger in spite of my warnings.

As several grotesque scenarios tore through my mind the elder left the table and began to unload his things on the boot rack by my door. As more came free I realized I had hardly seen half of what he carried, and again searched my home for the heaviest and hardest objects to throw or swing, anything to do significant damage within my arm's reach. He ordered the younger (Feily? Feelee?) to follow his example. My stomach clenched at the sight and I quickly began feeling nauseous. I tried not to let on how hard I shook.

When I caught the elder's (Torin? Corin?) eye and he nodded a wave of relief washed over me at the silent agreement, the understanding of how uncomfortable they made me feel and the acceptance that took me rather by pleasant surprise. My thanks was a brief and tight smile.

I saw to the younger first, treating his bruised back with as much tenderness as I could afford before giving him something to ease the pain and help him sleep. He fell into oblivion with his friend's name on his lips, head pillowed on his folded arms and Keelee's hand in his. The older (his Father? His Uncle?) helped me dress him again and I left a quilt folded on Keelee's knees for when Feelee got cold.

Torin's injuries were far more extensive where armour couldn't protect him.

"Come and sit. I must tend tae ye also."

"I am unhurt."

Oh, aye, and I am a forest giant, I thought. I wanted to tell him not to be proud and stupid. Instead I told him,

"If I don't right yer shoulder it will swell. Yer blood will clot and form a blockage. Ye can lose yer arm. And yer life." It may or may not have been an exaggeration, but what he did not know could not hurt me. "Ye shouldn't argue with yer physician," I said.

I was surprised when he leaned once again onto my chair for support, without a comment about my tongue. I smiled stupidly to myself as I prepared the things I needed to see to him. It felt good, not being questioned.

Torin watched his friends when he thought I wasn't looking, and when I saw his face my own fell. I have seen the look so many times and too often it was followed by the heartbreak and anguish of losing someone beloved. It was the absolute, paralyzing dread that every breath the person on my table drew was their last. He watched them and could do nothing, helpless, useless, weak.

I averted my gaze before I could be caught staring and embarrass him.

I helped the Dwarf upright again so that I might undress him and he swayed drunkenly on quaking legs, latching onto the edge of my kitchen table to steady himself. He tried to remove his own clothes but I caught his hands, gently pushing them back down to his sides.

"Let me," I asked. "Ye don't have tae dae this by yer lonesome." He didn't look at me, and it might have hurt a little if not for the furrow in his brow and intense focus in his face as he struggled to remaining upright.

We didn't speak as I worked to unclothe him. His skin was thick under my fingers, rough with time and labor, his hands marred with scars and cracked from dryness.

Ribs first, I decided, setting up everything I would need in order.

He swayed in my periphery when I turned away, losing his grasp on the edge of the table, fingernails scraping across the wood as his knees bucked, giving away under the weight of him. Torin collapsed, his strength leaving him, and I surged forward to catch him, supporting the Dwarf before he could fall, draping his good arm over my shoulder as I held him around the waist. He growled like some wild animal when I moved his dislocated shoulder and I whispered apologies as I adjusted my grip, struggling to keep him upright.

"Ye're heavy for a little folk," I said.

I helped him back into the chair, and though his eyes were wide open, there was exhaustion in them, and sleep. I wanted to allow him rest, grant him the relief of oblivion, but I had to tend to him first and the process would be unfortunately lengthy.

His ribs were in sick shades of green and purple. He breathed slow and shallow and he screwed his eye shut when I pressed my fingers to his side. I closed my eyes.

"Here," I said, extending a vile to him, one of my last. He looked at it as if it had done him some great injustice, then at me with a look that was little better. I pursed my lips and tried not to be offended. "For the pain," I explained. "It makes a fast habit in concentrated doses, so I cannot give ye more, but it will take some o' the edge off."

He tipped his head back and swallowed it down in one slip, then nodded at me. I used the same medicaments for his ribs as I had for Feelee's back, before carefully, so as not to disturb his arm, wrapping his midsection in clean cotton cloth. As I did, with his friend fatally wounded and struggling to stay alive and his other friend half-lucid, all I could think of was how much hair he had on his back and chest. He was like a bear or a beaver; some furry animal in a thick pelt to keep him warm in winter. He could likely braid his back and chest if he so pleased.

I had been with two people in my life (one too many than any self respecting lady should, but I surely wasn't that), but I have seen more naked men than was anyplace near the realm of proper for a lass, and this was the most hairy person that I had ever laid eyes on, which perhaps was why it was so much easier to see the scars.

They were everywhere, bold pale lines sprayed over the expanse of his back and sides and front. A stab on his back between third and fourth right rib; a line running downwards just left of his spine, missing it by a hair; a decade-old burn on his right forearm, hardened over pink and rough; a long scar from perhaps a sword running diagonally across his chest, as if someone slashed downwards over his heart in an attempt to open his ribcage; another, a curving crescent rightward of his abdomen that should have put his innards on the out…

I couldn't stop myself from touching them, some fresh, a few years old perhaps, and others half a lifetime, and all intertwined with pale black lines that drew shapes I had never seen before. He had stories written on his skin in blood and ink, a history of wars and demons like a map, blade and needle pressed into his back, his chest, his arms, and each carried a tale I felt little more than pity over as I traced them. Stories of old; of blood and corpses and familiar wide-eyed faces on the battlefield at dawn's first light. Stories of the dead, of the lost, of things that were important, of things that should have been; stories that spelled out his life like the roots of a tree, small and delicate on the nape of his neck and branching out over his shoulders and down the length of his spine, all thick and bold and fire and fury. Stories that all boiled down to a brutal, terrifying fact: he won.

No one should have to live through that, live with the memory of it etched into their dreams and into their skin.

"Valar…" I whispered, ghosting my fingers over one of the more prominent scars that stretched over his back to his right shoulder blade, disfiguring his skin and bone structure.

"Is your gawking quite satisfied?" he demanded, and I felt my face heat up, bowing my head.

"Forgive me, sir. I had not meant…" I struggled with words for some time, then whispered, "I'm sorry, sir," because someone had to, for every burden he carried on his back and across his chest and upon his shoulders. "Right away, sir."

I wrapped his chest careful as I dared, trying hard to not move his arm more than I absolutely had to.

"They will heal in three tae four weeks. Until then don't exert yerself overmuch," I told him. He nodded for me to continue. I did. He had sprained his left shoulder and I inquired after how it had come to be as I treated it.

"Early this morn," Torin said, his voice rough and exhausted. "We slept in the trees for safety. There wasn't enough rope to secure us all. I caught the majority of my weight with my arms, but I was hardly awake. I landed wrong," he explained. "I tried to move it as little as the situation would allow, but the pain has yet to relent," he said, then, almost as an afterthought added, "It is more intense than I recall it being in the past."

"As it should be," I supplied. "… Memories fade over time, change. Some things we only imagine to recall correctly. Sometimes we bear memory o' things that have never come to pass. Others we cannot recall at all."

"Aye. That I know enough of," he said. I bit my lip, his words like in icy breeze in my chest, and pity born out of empathy cloaking my bones. Loss was a weight borne by one's lonesome, but the gaps it left in one's mind were more terrible than those it left in one's life.

"How does it feel? Is it hurtin' less? Are ye comfortable?" I asked once I had secured it to his side.

"Better, yes, and as comfortable as I might be. Thank you, lass," he said, still not looking at me. I focused on the gash in his right arm. His skin was shredded and the scar would stand out rippling over his skin but that was luckily the worst of it. Any deeper and there would have been a problem less easily fixed.

"I will need tae clean and stitch it," I warned as I set out the sewing kit.

"Leave it, lass. We can take care of ourselves."

I shook my head and shoved a thumb over my shoulder to my kitchen table. "Pardon, sir, if yer reassurance doesn't reassure me." I paused, dropping a thread into a cup of wine standing on the edge of the table, then added, softer, "Orcs are unpopular with us."

"As they are everywhere else," he said, as if I didn't know that already.

"Aye, but here they are also frequent. We are used tae them: solitary attacks, raids… we've seen it all. It would be cruel tae charge penniless families for the terror and death those creatures spread," I explained, because I had no doubts left it was not cutthroats. Too much damage for a trio of Dwarves armed for battle. "I need tae clean the cut. Fire or wine?"

"No fire," he snapped, so sharp that I jumped back away from him. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. "Wine, if it is all the same to you."

I bit my lip, making no comment and instead wet a cloth with wine and pressed it to the cut. He gasped through his nose, grit his teeth. It had scabbed over when it was wrapped and the crisp dried blood was pulled away with the improvised bandage. It took to bleeding down his arm again, and I was sure the sharp sting of alcohol in his veins burnt.

"How did it happen?" I asked, kneeling on the stone floor by his side, the reek of raw flesh sweet in my nose and a cleansed needle in my hand.

"Ambush," he said plainly. "We are traveling for work. I brought the boys with me to teach them business and sales. They came at nightfall, four of them."

"Considerin' ye're here, am I tae understand that the world is rid o' four Orcs?" He said nothing, but he didn't need to. I smiled. "There was a raid only three moons ago," I said. "We fight them as best we can, and Rangers are never far. We lodge at least a pair in the local inn at all times. I never understood why those creatures loved the Northlands so much."

"It is the unprotected people they love."

"We are hardly unprotected," I scoffed. "Torches and pitchforks or swords and arrows. Loch makes dae with what it's given. Ye ought not judge afore kennin'. We might not look like much, but I promise we may surprise ye yet."

"That is no life to live; in fear."

"Nay, it is not. But, Loch stood here for four hundred year and it will stand for four hundred more. We fight and we teach our children tae be brave and tae fight. It's the best we can dae."

He didn't offer that we could leave, settle elsewhere, someplace safer as most other travellers I've treated said. That was the first reason for which I respected him.

We were silent as I sewed Torin back together. I ran my fingers across the chaos upon his skin again, and eventually had to close my eyes. They were watering.

"Who did this tae ya…"

"Time." I hadn't realized I had said it aloud until he answered it minutes later. I flushed. "I haven't need of your pity," he said, nay snapped.

"Nae, ye don't. Forgive me, it is not my place."

When I was finished I wrapped it and diverted my single-minded focus to his right ankle, sitting on the floor at the foot of the chair with my legs folded underneath me. It wasn't broken, but the sprain was a rough one. I didn't get back up when I finished. Instead I remained sitting on the floor by his feet, letting the serenity settle like mist over my home. I placed my hand on his knee and he didn't look down at me for many minutes.

I looked up at him, and he looked up at his sleeping friends, so peaceful and untouched by the woes of the world they were in their mindless oblivion. A thing of envy, that, if not for the near fatal circumstance.

He said, "He will wake," and it was as if he was ordering fate to wake the lad on my table and it was not up for negotiation. Perhaps it was not. The boy looked so much like him; a son, likely. I could not imagine what I would do had my Edrig lain on that table in Keelee's place. His recovery was not a choice and I knew Torin himself would die and travel to wherever Dwarves go to in death to get his son back.

"He is strong. Has tae be, else he'd not have been awake when ye came. He will fight." After another aching moment of silence I added, "Speak tae him. He needs tae ken he is not in this fight alone, tae ken ye are in the darkness with him." I helped him back into his boot, knotting the ropes for him.

When I was finished he said, "Many thanks, lass. You will be repaid in full for your efforts."

I scoffed and waved him off. "Nonsense. Injuries by Orcs are free o' charge; I said. Think nothin' o' it." I paused, then, "He's close tae ye. Keelee," I said as I began helping him back into his clothing. "Tae yer blood, I'm meanin'." I wanted to confirm my theory before naming the lad his son. He shook his head and told me he could do it. He could, true to his word, but just barely. I restrained myself from helping again.

"Kíli is my nephew."

"Oh. From a brother or sister?"

"Sister."

"And the other?"

Thorin nodded. "He is also."

I nodded. "I suppose I should have kent. The way he was with him. Yer other nephew with yer first nephew, I mean… Tonight will be hard for him. For both o' ye. Rest. Gather yer strength. Yer body will need it." I stood, cleaning the table of medical supplies and then leaned back on the edge.

"Kíli."

I looked up and frowned at him. "I beg yer pardon?"

"Kíli. Not Keelee."

I looked down, cheeks colouring pink. "Oh. Pardon, sir. Kíli. And ye are…?"

"Thorin."

"Thorin," I said, nodding, blushing deeper. Stupid: Thorin, not Torin. There is a large difference. "It is a nice name. Thorin…"

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

I did not know then, a young girl without foresight that I was, how long I would remember that name for, and what it would come to mean for me and for my son. I only hope my own name had come to mean to him a fraction of what his carried upon my lips. Perhaps, had I understood then the weight of that meeting, and who the Dwarf sitting before me was, I would not have said the name so thoughtlessly. I would have given it the honour it deserved.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

"Oh! It is becoming late. Are ye hungry? I will be starting on supper soon. There are not enough leftovers, but I can cater something up. I don't imagine ye've eaten much in the last few days. Ye eat grains? I am not sure what Dwarves eat. It is said yer kind eat stone…?"

"Whoever said it is an imbecile," he snapped.

"Oh. Forgive me, sir. I had not kent…"

"Now you do, and I would thank you to refrain from such assumptions."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I had nae meanin' tae offend, sir." I scrambled to remedy the embarrassment by starting on supper even through his assurance that they would live without it, that it was not necessary. I put a cauldron over the fire and started on oatmeal through his protests.

Tentatively, casting Thorin a wary look over my shoulder, I called my son in and together we warmed up leftovers and finished on the extra supper. My stores were thinning but even with three new mouthes to feed this evening it would last me until the harvest trade.

"Are ye good with those?" my son asked as we ate, jerking his chin to the weapons the Dwarves laid out by my door.

"I have seen more battle than your mother has years in this world, lad. Aye, I am experienced," Thorin said, and there was regret in his voice, and anger. At the circumstances that gave him his prowess with a blade? At Edrig for once again sticking his nose where it did not belong? I did not know. Edrig nodded, chewing noisily, and asked the next question around a mouthful.

"If ye're so good, why dae ye look like ye tried tae kill death and lost?"

"Edrig!" I exclaimed, striding forward and cuffing him on the head, and then apologized for him. Edrig continued.

"I find it concerning that someone who has seen more battles than me Ma years would come out o' one lookin' so awful."

"I was not fighting with skilled warriors at my back," Thorin explained. "I was fighting with two boys hardly old enough to blood their blades." Edrig nodded, feet swinging back and forth where he sat on the edge of the table, his back to me.

"So, if ye got it in yer head tae point a sword at someone, how many unarmed people would it take tae kill ye?"

"I am afraid that number is higher than you would be comfortable with, lad." Both of us tensed. "Should anyone decide to visit your home now, uninvited, they would find themselves unwelcome and leaving shortly."

"Aye? Are ye certain about that? Because I am not convinced that my good mother would appreciate having tae fight off intruders with a cast iron frying pan."

I hit him again and hissed for him to stop. He whined and winced but otherwise remained unfazed by my boiling anger.

"So, how many o' ye were traveling? Bit a small party, by any account. Where is everyone else?"

I grabbed his ear and pulled him off of the table, pushing him to our room.

"That's it, that's enough for the night. Away with ye. Make yerself scarce afore I tan yer hide." I turned to Thorin and blushed. "Forgive my son. Sometimes he forgets he was not raised by wolves."

"The lad has a good heart, if somewhat tactless. He has done no wrong."

"It was rude."

"It was cautious," Thorin said. "Does he know how to fight?"

"A little," I said, setting my empty bowl aside and taking his away once he had scraped it clean with his fingers. I took wine from the cabinet and poured two cups. "He plays guards and thieves with the other boys in the town, but we live a distance away. He does not get the chance tae practice as often as I would like. The Rangers demonstrate things occasionally, and the lads spent days tae dae the same, but..." We drank.

"You fear for him."

"Would ye blame me tae fret over that boy? He's as much brains as he does brawn, and he does not have very much brawn. He is eager to bloody his sword and become a man grown."

"There is little joy in being a man grown," Thorin said, and I held my cup up in toast to that truth. We finished our drinks in silence and I took to cleaning up. I pulled the washbasin from the shed and started washing clothes, theirs included, and hung them by the fire to dry. Edrig came back out as I busied myself and when Fíli awoke he sat beside him and tried to get the Dwarf boy to eat a little. Fíli said he would only eat when his brother did, but that didn't deter Edrig from his mission to force feed the poor lad at least five spoons of porridge.

Between murmuring for his brother to wake up and petting his head and face, Fíli listened to Edrig recite all the accounts of Orc victims coming to my door and leaving happily with their families shortly thereafter. It must've helped, talking with someone his age. Eventually he became more comfortable in the presence of strangers and agreed to eat a little bit, though moving was a terrible chore so after fighting Edrig he submitted to his fate of being fed.

Edrig found some of my journals and went through them with Fíli reading out loud and showing pictures of flowers and herbs, explaining how they would help his brother. Fíli didn't smile, he wouldn't for some days yet, I imagined, but his eyes were brighter with a new hope that was not there before, and a faith only a child could bear, and my heart smiled with parental pride.

"I am thirsty," Edrig said suddenly, jumping to his feet. "Are ye thirsty? Dae ye like tea? I will make ye some tea. A warm cup o' tea makes everything better." He rushed to it without hearing a response. Fíli relaxed into himself a little more.

It was black outside when it was finally time. I've done it many times, too many. Now was not easier than all the hundreds of times before, when mothers and fathers and siblings had to be dragged out by other people, away from their loved ones' sides as they lay unconscious in Master Carrig's office or, less often, on my kitchen table. The guilt, I knew, would kill me, but they could not stay.

Then I heard a grunt of pain.

Thorin was frowning in his sleep, his breath becoming uneven as his head twitched. He started growling, fighting some unseen enemy in his sleep and foolishly, forgetting he had the instincts of a warrior, I approached him, pressing a hand on his good shoulder.

Edrig and Fíli silenced, and then Fíli whispered to me, "Missus, don't do that! Step away!"

"Sir?" I shook him gently. "Sir?" He jerked in his sleep, causing me to jump back a step. "Thorin?" I whispered. His eyes snapped open and he had me by the arm in a grip that had surely bruised it. He growled low, glaring at me with fire in his wild, unseeing eyes. I grasped his forearm with both of mine, heart beating in my throat and in my ears. Behind me, I could hear Edrig searching for a kitchen knife.

"Thorin!" I squeaked. "'Tis alright. T'was but a dream," I assured him voice trembling, eyes tearing up, still fisting the sleeves of his tunic until my knuckles were white. "This is a safe place. T'was nought but a dream."

He blinked twice, then shook his head, blinked twice more.

"Apologies, lass. I'd no meaning to frighten you. You should not approach me when I sleep. No good comes of it."

"Oh, aye, I can feel it. So if ye can just let go o' my arm now…?"

He looked down as if realizing for the first time he held me fast and snapped his hand away as if he had been burned. My arm was hurting something mighty, a black and blue handprint quickly forming where he had gripped it. I hissed as I rubbed at it, shaking my head against the tremble of fear that overtook my body.

Thorin looked guilty, sitting as far from me as the chair would allow and glaring at his own hands with something akin to hate. A working man's hands. A killer's hands. Dripping with red, trembling. Only weapons have been let to make a home in those hands, wide and rough and disfigured.

"It's late, Ma," Edrig said, and I jumped back, heart in my throat. "Ye should go tae bed now." He stood with a knife in front of him, pointing it squarely at Thorin. Fíli, eyes wide, had both hands wrapped around one of Edrig's, head darting wildly between the three of us.

"Of course it's late: what are ye doin' here? Get yer little arse tae bed, Edrig," I snapped. He didn't lower the knife.

"Edrig, please put the knife away." It was Fíli who asked. "It was only a battle dream. Uncle has them sometimes. He didn't mean to hurt your mother."

"But he did."

Fíli squared his jaw and said, "If you try to hurt Uncle, I will have to try to hurt you. Enough people have been hurt already. Do not make the rest of us."

Edrig put the knife away without a word and sat back down beside Fíli, anger welling up in his eyes in the form of unshed tears. The gash on Thorin's arm took to bleeding again so I fetched more dressing.

Edrig whispered to Fíli, "I always tell Ma that one day the people she invites intae our home will hurt her. She never listens."

Fíli said, "Because if that day ever comes, everyone she helped will stand at her back. My mother is like that, too, and this is what she always tells me. People always remember kindness."

"Maybe where ye come from," Edrig whispered, and I stopped listening in on a private conversation, smiling to myself nevertheless. When I was done I looked outside and said something I would never say on a sober head.

"It's snowin'."

"It looks like it might be a blizzard," Edrig said, staring at Fíli like he was daring him, and I didn't correct his statement.

"Aye," I said instead. "So it might. It will be a cold night. Edrig…?" My son nodded and went to fetch the spare sheets. I crossed my fingers.

Prove your nephew right, Thorin, I thought. Prove that kindness is remembered among your people as much as Fíli believes it to be.

Thorin looked torn between propriety and the fact that it was his nephew laying on my kitchen table, fighting for his life, sweating with illness. His nephew, whose shoulder was nearly twice its normal size. His nephew, who was in shades of yellow and green like a rotting corpse.

They remained. Of course they did. Everyone would, if offered the chance. Edrig was in the sitting room with some spare bedding – a pillow, several quilts and a winter fur I had yet to put away – before I even made the conscious decision not to send them away. I added more wood to the fire, willing it to burn through the night, to give us warmth in winter's parting kiss.

Before bidding them goodnight, I set a candle in the window and lit it, then removed as many valuables as I could from the main room of the house and took them to my chamber without being outright rude much as I might. Once I did bid them good night I went to my own room, where Edrig was waiting for me on our shared bed.

I locked the door and double checked that it was closed right, and got into bed. Edrig slept closest to the wall, and though I knew how to wake up at a moment's notice, I put a paring knife under my pillow just the same. It took me a long time to start falling asleep, but by then, hours later, the Dwarves seemed to have fallen back asleep also, and then I couldn't sleep for an entirely different reason than the strangers with weapons in the home I shared with my son; these strangers snored like they would wake the dead.

That night I tossed and turned, my mind galloping like a wild stallion, and when the morning came it was too soon.

The bed was cool when I woke, surprised that I slept at all with the previous day plaguing my every thought, my memory returning to the Dwarves and what they had done. Or rather, what they had not done, which was everything I had expected them to. I didn't realize its emptiness either right away, my mind still asleep, and something smelled like breakfast. So I smiled and shuffled further under the covers and didn't open my eyes until I reached out and felt only the wall.

To say I was on my feet as fast as lightening was not an exaggeration, heart pounding in my ears.

"Edrig? Edrig!" When I tried to open the door it was locked from the outside and it took me several terrifying moments to remember that this was the standard procedure: whoever woke first locked the door from the outside and slipped the key under the door. When I rushed into the kitchen Edrig was crouching by the fireplace with a pan over the meagre flame and a hushing finger at his lips.

"They are still sleepin'," he whispered, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

I looked at the state of my dining area and sitting room. The space was one room, divided only by the placement of furniture.

The older Dwarf slept on the wood couch. It and its straw mattress have always been too short for me, my feet hanging over the edge whenever I, more often than not, fell asleep on it. He fit on it without an issue, but the fur over him made him seem even smaller than he already was. No, small was the wrong term. Short, yes, but he was by no means small to any stretch of imagination. He looked warm, if not particularly comfortable.

It was my kitchen table that drew my attention and my person. Kíli was still asleep, even as the sun had already begun rising, painting the overcast sky from black to grey. Fíli sat in the chair, half laying on the table itself. The pillow I set to save his back some pain had migrated under him and he used it as a boost, letting him better lay half on top of his brother. His head was on Kíli's belly, hands still holding one of his brother's as if holding his hand was the only thing that kept Kíli alive and if I were to be honest it might as well have been. He had a furrow in his brow, pained and restless, and he was making small noises in the back of his throat.

His quilt, the one I had not finished mending the day before, was wrapped around him securely. He either woke up to adjust it or Edrig had before I came.

Kíli was burning up still, but he was cooler than he had been last night. His heart was as steady as it ought to be in sleep, and he breathed easier, if still a little laboured. He was still in shades of olive and sweating right through his clothes and blankets. Carefully as I could, so as not to wake his brother, I unwrapped the cotton on his shoulder to take a look. The smell was horrible. The poison was drawn out, along with worms of pus, and the bandages were coated in a sickly green slime on the inside. They clung to his skin and made a wet noise as they pealed back.

"Oh my… stars, Ma, wrap that back up, for the love o'… that's horrible!" I shook my head and chuckled.

"What are ye makin'?" I asked.

"Eggs. I don't ken how much they eat or if they even like eggs, but I made three for Thorin and two for Fíli. Did ye ken they are brothers? They look as far from brothers as a snowy owl and a woodpecker."

"I'm sure they will love tae hear that analogy, dove."

"I don't think they'll be carin' much right now," Edrig said, then turned to look at Kíli. "Is Kíli goin' tae die?"

"I don't ken," I admitted as I cut away the bandages. "Dwarves are different from Men. I'm goin' intae it half blind with only books tae guid my hand. He's fightin' it hard, the lad, but…"

Edrig was silent for a moment, then said, "I don't won't him tae die. It would kill Fíli."

"It would kill them both," I said, looking at Thorin.

"Have Ye ever lost someone like that?" he asked, and I levelled him with a warning look.

"Edrig. Ye ken we don't talk about me life afore Loch." Edrig hung his head.

"Where dae ye think they came from?"

"Ye can ask Fíli when he wakes up."

I layered another dose of salve over Kíli's shoulder and wrapped it in clean cotton. The swelling and redness has gone down significantly but not yet entirely. If he woke he would be in my care for a week at the very least and, not that I could not afford it but, I still had two patients from three moons past that had had an arm and a foot respectively amputated. Carrig had preformed the amputation but he was too busy to look after them thereafter.

The old bandages I threw into the coals, stoking the flames until they caught fire and burned, taking with them the foul stench. Edrig moved the pan away until the reek of illness cleared.

We broke our fast and I was washing the dishes when I heard it: there was a sharp intake of breath behind me, and then something heavy fell on the floor. I had a kitchen knife in my hand and was shoving my son behind me at once.

The Dwarf, Thorin, was half-crouched defensively on the floor with a blade in his hand, too. It took us both a moment to return to our senses, and I placed the knife back on the counter and shook my head, my back to him even as my face began to burn.

"Apologies, lass. I had no meaning to frighten you."

"Ye also forgive me, sir." I squandered the fleeting thought of explaining why I had a knife pointed at his chest from across the small room, but I didn't need to explain myself to the stranger. From the look on his face, the fleeting realization of, oh, of course, I felt maybe I didn't need to say the words: he was well enough acquainted with instinct by his own.

He didn't ask what exactly I thought I was going to do to him with that knife, didn't laugh in my face from shoving a weapon in his. He simply stood and put his knife back in his boot and I pursed my lips, scowling in anger and a little bit of fear at the fact that he had not emptied all of his weapons at the door as I had requested.

Right, I thought; warrior, and sleeps like one; with one eye open and a weapon in his hand.

Thorin looked up, then respectfully averted his eyes from my person and it took that for me to recall that I was still in a flimsy nightgown. I excused myself, face reddening, to dress. The handprint on my arm was blackened and swollen, standing out vividly against sun-starved skin, and ached with a tight fire as I got back into my clothes. I came back into the kitchen in decent dress in time to see Edrig extending a plate of eggs to Thorin.

His adult face was distorted by the fact that he was a palm's width shorter than my five and ten-year-old son.

"No, lad. I can't. You and your mother have already done more for my family than I can ask."

"Take the bloody plate, sir. I made this and ye are not wastin' three eggs worth o' food."

"Edrig!" I snapped, cuffing him on the head. He whined but said nothing.

"Please forgive him, sir. He doesn't ken when tae keep his mouth shut," I hissed pointedly. "But, he is right: ye must eat somethin'. Ye're injured well enough and malnutrition isn't goin' tae help yer case. Please. I insist."

He took the plate with a nod and ate quietly, sitting in the chair that he occupied the night before.

"How is he?" Thorin asked when I was done washing the dishes. Edrig excused himself to go about his other chores, leaving us to our own.

"Hard tae say," I told him with a sigh, moving around the table to press a hand to Kíli's brow. Feverish, as he was a half hour ago; pulse steady, as it was a half hour ago. He was just a lad, couldn't be older than my Edrig. I couldn't fathom what Thorin must've been going through, watching the boy sweat and shiver in his sleep, hanging onto life by a thread.

"His body is strong, and he is taking the medicaments well. The poison is leavin' him, but the fever and infection can kill him just the same."

He looked at his nephew and for the life of me I believed he would never look away, counting every breath, terrified it would be the lad's final, every beat of his weakened heart the last. I averted my eyes, giving him the privacy he deserved. Men didn't like it when people saw them crying.

Fíli woke up soon after, jumping like a startled deer with a muted, "Huh—wha—I'm awake, I didn't do it." He looked around like a lost animal, then his attention zeroed in on his brother. He went back to stroking his hair and touching his face like the brunette boy would vanish before him if he looked away for only a second.

"You have to wake up, Kee," he pled, but Kíli remained asleep. "How is he?" he asked without looking away, and I told him the same thing I told Thorin. He sniffed and shook his head. "Kee will wake up. He always gets back up. Even when he loses he still gets up. Dwalin always chastises him for not knowing when to give up, even though everyone knows it's just a cover; he's always been proud of Kíli for that. He'll wake up." I wasn't sure who he was trying to assure – himself, maybe, or all of us, too.

His Uncle tried to encourage him to eat. He tried for close to an hour, but Fíli shook his head and said again, "I will eat when Kíli eats," and that was that.

I realized very quickly that I couldn't very well leave the house with these people still in it, and throwing them out now of all times would be a cruelty. That was well enough as there was no shortage of work I could do from home.

I set out a hamper of clothing that needed mending and a sewing kit and sat stitching on the couch. It was a good way to make a little money on the side, mending people's things; women too busy at home to do it, unwed lads, half-blind elderly. I mended clothing, altered it; occasionally I would sit with the other women to dye fabrics for the seamstress, thought it wasn't a particularly enjoyable task.

I sent Edrig out about his chores in the village and instead set my focus between keeping busy with chores and checking on the wounded trio.

At high sun I made lunch and served it, then found another task to busy myself with. I set the plates, poured a drink, but the two awake could not bring themselves to eat much of anything as the sun passed its peak and Kíli had yet to return to us. Fíli muttered sobbing pleas every now and again, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Come back to us, Kee," he begged. "Open your eyes." But Kíli didn't listen. He didn't listen the first time, he didn't listen the seventeenth time, and he didn't listen now. We sat wordlessly, and the only sound was the wind, as it whistled through the draft in the kitchen window, and the blonde lad quietly sobbing over his brother.


	2. Children of the Sun

**_Strangers When We Meet:_**

 _ **Author:** Nicky._

 _ **Rating:** Mature for sexual content in part three._

 _ **Disclaimer:** The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to Mr. Tolkien, and in part I suppose to Mr. Jackson as well. This is a non-profit work for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here. Credits go where credits are due :))_

 _ **Pairings:** Thorin/OFC (Original Female Character), minor Bagginshield at the very end, because I'm a shipper and I couldn't not, Fíli &Kíli&OMC friendship and teenage shenanigans._

 _ **Summary:** Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget._

 _ **Chapter Notes:** Chapter features canon-typical and period-typical views of gender roles in society, canon-typical prejudice, children born out of wedlock, and drinking problems. So, it's nothing explicitly horrible, but it's still pretty bad, namely that last one._

 _ **Special Thanks:** I'd like to profoundly thank _ onoheiwa _for your brilliant insight and support and help. This would not have turned out without you!_ onoheiwa _took the time to help make my work better and just, thank you, so much! Your help was amazing :)) Many thanks also go to all of you, my lovely readers, including_ Freelancer Ithuriel _,_ Arianna Le Fey _,_ 01juliet _, and_ Guest _for your lovely reviews and favourites and follows :))_

 _ **Face Claims:** You tell me. Should I give one, or shouldn't I? Do you want one?_

 _ **Story:** …_

* * *

 _2 / Children of the Sun_

 _"We can do anything. It's not because our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It's a potluck, I'm making pork chops, I'm making those long noodles you love so much."_

 _― Richard Siken, Crush_

* * *

Kíli awoke shortly afore sundown.

The fire had died and my home had begun cooling in the looming evening chill. I put my cloak on and announced I would return with more firewood. Thorin had offered to accompany me but I told him he needed his strength more than I. As I closed the front door behind me my heart lurched into my throat, and then dropped into my knees. They would steal anything I had of value. I had few enough things with me; losing them to a bunch of filthy, stunted little men could devastate my scarce financial situation.

I almost stepped back into the house to request Thorin's help outside but even as my hand fell on the handle I knew I could not do that. He needed his rest and I needed some time for myself. I selected what I needed from my diminishing stores, then set it on the ground and sat down hard on the logs, burying my face in my hands.

"They are alright," I told myself. "Edrig is alright. Ye are alright. Everythin' is alright."

They were just kids, two of them, and the other could hardly move without being in pain. My son and I, our things, were safe. They had ample opportunity the night before, besides. That ought to stand for something?

I hauled the pile of wood into my arms and went back inside. Fíli all but ran into me the moment I crossed the threshold. I was stunned to see the lad on his feet, much less moving about the house. Wide-eyed and panting, he grabbed my sleeve and dragged me inside.

"Missus! I was just going to fetch you! Come, quick!" he had said, tugging for me to follow. He made all of two steps before freezing, and turning back to me with cheeks coloured red. "Sorry, Missus. Let me get that for you," he said, and grabbed the stack of wood from my arms, not straining in the least to lift what had to be a quarter of Edrig's weight. He winced and grit his teeth in pain but didn't set the pile down until he was before the fireplace.

He ushered me to my kitchen table, his entire body tight with pain and joy.

"Come! I think Kíli is waking up!" he shouted, even as I was already at the kitchen table. The good news was a physical weight, holding the house down like iron ball shackles, that had been broken and we each took our first breath in two days. Fíli wrapped his arms around my legs in a mess of tears and 'thankyouthankyouthankyou's', then returned to his vigil beside the brunette boy. I fought the urge to comfort him; it was neither my place nor my business. Edrig, however, when he returned home, had no such qualms, taking to sitting beside Fíli for an hour as Kíli regained his consciousness.

I joined Thorin on the couch, redressing his wounds. They had opened again, oozing streaks of red through the cotton cloth holding them. He was warm, warmer than he had been before, in a good way; as though a hearth fire had been lit under his skin, calling life back into his blood and bone, returning the colour to his face; as though all of his strength was in his nephew and now that he awoke it had returned to him. Thorin looked younger somehow, less heavy, a chain that held him to the floor by the neck crushed and him freed.

"Is he…?"

I bit my lip, then said, "The fever broke. It burned the poison away with it. Rest. They will be well now."

Edrig and I moved Kíli to the couch and set up a place for Fíli by his brother's side as they had been attached at the hand throughout it all. Hours later the energy in Fíli was yet to be exhausted, and having known him only as the sleeping, muttering, sluggish puddle of devastation, the change of character scared me at first. He was everywhere and all at once, and by his brother's side all the while.

Kíli only woke for a short time, and only long enough for me to ask him his name, the moon and year, and the colour of his hair. I hoped when next he woke I would be able to get several more questions answered correctly before sleep took him. Fíli took it upon himself to tell him absolutely everything: from before the attack, from during the attack, from after the attack and the days they spent walking until they got to my home, never mind the information fell upon deaf ears (and I was taken aback when I learned that their destination was Southwatch, a day's ride from here; a coincidence indeed that they should end up so close).

"… And then he went to grab you but you ducked at the last second, like a cat or, or a deer, and bam! You shot him, right in the knee! So, he was down and howling like a coyote, and then I jumped onto his back and it was just like Mister Dwalin taught us: knife to anything soft. I got his chest instead of his throat by accident because he was moving so much and trying to throw me off, but I held on. And then you came in and kicked him in the other knee and it cracked! It was so disgusting. His knee went inside out like the hind legs of an animal, and then Uncle Thorin was there and I didn't have the time to see what happened, he was so fast!..."

"Does he ever stop?" I questioned, sipping wine. I had filled a cup and offered one to Thorin but he opted to drink from the flagon. I didn't argue.

"When he sleeps," Thorin told me, sitting across from me at the table. The fact that after the last several days he never wanted either of his nephews to be quiet for more than an hour was left unsaid. "How long until he is well?"

"Hard tae say," I sighed. "Dwarves are different from Men. That he was awake when ye came tae Loch was a miracle in itself. I have only a small number o' books tae go on, I fear…" I stopped myself from saying more and we fell into silence.

On the couch, Fíli continued talking to his sleeping brother and nobody stopped him. Edrig sat on the foot of the couch and listened to the adventure as well, eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish.

I wanted to call him away. My son had enough Orc encounters in his life, he didn't need the stories of others' misfortunes. But he was far too engrossed in the stories to even hear me if I did call.

Maybe he can use them, I decided eventually. Women and children are hidden away in the Town Hall during raids. We are barricaded in and safe, but Edrig and I live far from the boarders of Loch, I thought, isolated and unprotected, and he will not be a child forever. I can't hope to teach him to defend himself like a man.

I let him stay, but remained poised to call him to our room in a moment's notice.

"I am considering remaining here," Thorin said, and I looked at him for further explanation over the rim of my cup. "In Loch," he said. "It is just as well as Southwatch, and he can stay in the care of someone who is familiar with his injuries."

"I can't promise ye an ample supply o' jobs."

"Good smiths are in short supply at all times. Loch needs weapons better than what Men craft."

"No one can argue with that," I shrugged. "If ye give them a way tae protect themselves and their loved ones the people will beg ye tae stay once ye have tae go," I commented, and even laughed a little at the image. "No heavy liftin' for two tae three weeks at least, all the same."

He nodded and didn't comment further.

"… I was amazing! You even said so yourself, Kee. Not lying. I'm never going to be as good as you with a bow, but I told you so that I can use it. I told you and you never believed me. Now who was eating whose rabbit, huh? Of course, then my arm was hurting because of the bowstring. You said to twist my elbow and I did, and now I have a bruise the size of a trout on my forearm. You're a rubbish teacher, did I ever tell you that? You just wait until you wake up. I'm going to teach you that knife game Uncle Dwalin taught me, and I'm going to laugh when you lose your pinky, too…"

Fíli was quiet for a moment, and then added in a hoarse whisper, "Please wake up, Kee. It's not the same if you never interrupt me. I know I said I hated it when you interrupt me and make me forget what I wanted to say, but I hate it when you don't interrupt me more. Please wake up?"

I looked up. Fíli was slumped over his brother's prone form, one hand clasping Kíli's and the other stroking his hair, wiping his brow with a cloth, hovering over him as if he meant to shield him from the rest of the world with only his presence, as if being by his brother's side would magically make everything right. He was murmuring some indiscernible gibberish, too low for me to make out the soft words, barely a whisper in the back of his throat. Edrig got up and left them be, story time over.

"The Black Rabbit Inn is fairly cheep," I said. "They don't have small rooms for ye, but the owner isn't goin' tae cheat ye intae an over-charge because ye're foreign."

"… Do you remember when we were children, and Uncle Thorin used to come home late from work?" Fíli said, talking quietly now, almost too quiet for me to hear and I knew I shouldn't be hearing it at all. "Ma let us stay up until he came so he can say good night. We used to put furs on the floor by the fire and curl up like pupae and wait for him to come in. In the winter he used to be all snowy like a wild caveman and we used to make fun of that. Ma got so mad when all the snow melted off of him and he made puddles on the floor. Remember? And the first time Ma found us on the floor by the fire she had a conniption. Thought one of the sparks was going to land on the furs and set us on fire… She caved, eventually. After weeks and with restrictions, but she let us. And she and Thorin read to us. I liked it because with all the furs, it didn't hurt so much when you started kicking…"

"He can stay," I blurted. "If he wants. He can stay. I don't have anywhere tae put him, and he'd have tae leave, o' course, but just for a day or two, until Kíli can keep himself awake for several hours."

I couldn't imagine Fíli would leave his brother's side come fire or flood; not until Kíli could hold a conversation and even then Fíli's sleep would be a series of horrid night terrors of his brother dying, and I'd not be the one to make him walk away. The first few nights he needed the reassurance; and he was only, what, four and ten? Five and ten? The poor lad didn't deserve to be sent away from the ones he loved, now of all times.

"It will be hard for him, for the first few days. Weeks, tae be truthful, but tonight, tomorrow; they will be the hardest. Ye can take him, he is yer child, but if ye want tae, if he wants tae, he can stay for a night or two. Now that Kíli is awake I will have tae stay at home tae take care o' him. He will be safe here, and ye have yer visitation privileges… Well."

"You are too kind, lass, leaving strangers in your home. Feeding them. Offering them a bed for a night. Kind, and very foolish."

"I made ye leave yer weapons by the door," I pointed out.

"Aye, and I awoke the next morning with a knife in my hand. What if I had the intention of hurting you? Hurting your son?" That I wouldn't stand a chance didn't need saying. I shuddered. It didn't go unnoticed. Thorin looked… hurt, to be blunt. Hurt but not surprised. More over, he looked disappointed. Guilt chilled my belly even as wine warmed it.

Some would shudder at the thought of you being a witch, I thought, It hardly makes you one.

"Ye didn't have the intention o' hurtin' me and mine," I said, and hoped that I judged right.

"You cannot trust us."

"I don't. And I won't. Not until ye prove that I can. It makes me sick tae my stomach, tae be truthful, every time I leave my son in the room with ye, alone. But compromises have tae be made, and I can't take my patients anywhere but my kitchen… It become difficult, tae balance between my job and my son. It's always one or the other." I shook my head and looked down at my empty cup, wondering why the bloody hell I had said that to him as my face heated up.

"Your son should come first," he said, and I should have been angry with him for presuming to tell me how to raise my child. I wasn't. I simply explained that by choosing my job I was also choosing my son, in a way. No job meant no home; no home meant no Edrig.

"And your husband? Where is he?"

"Look around the house and tell me," I said, feeling like he had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. My eyes prickled with tears and I had to blink them away, refusing to let him know the impact his question had.

He was quiet for a time, brow furrowed, and then his eyes changed, darkened with something akin to sad sympathy, and I could see the moment he understood. Understood that there was no husband, no one to take care of me, no one to provide in my household but myself. I was the husband and the wife, the father and the mother. I had only my son, and when he grew up he would have his own wife and children to look after.

He made no comment on that, and that was the second reason for which I respected him.

He filled my cup and we both drank.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

Thorin was gone when I turned around, plates of steaming dinner on my arms. Edrig was with the lads on the couch and as I called to the table he and Fíli lined up to wash their hands and take a seat.

"It doesn't look particularly tasteful," I said, wrinkling my nose at the thick mix of rice and lentils, "but I promise it is more pleasin' tae the tongue than it is to the eyes."

"Thank you, Missus," the Dwarf lad said, scooping the food into his mouth and it occurred to me this is probably the first time he had a hearty meal in a few days. "This is much better than the stuff Uncle Thorin makes. Almost as good as Mum."

I smiled. "O' course it's better than what yer Uncle makes, lad: I'm the leddy o' this house… Fíli? Where is yer Uncle?"

"Out," the lad said, catching a chunk of food in his hand when it fell out of his mouth. Edrig reach across the table to knock his fork over the Dwarf's knuckles.

I hadn't heard the door opening or Thorin's announcing his leave. Yes, I was far too deep in thought to hear anything, but I had expected I would pay closer attentions to a trio of greedy cave dwellers in my home, most of all when my back was turned.

Ay, and the townspeople ought to be wary of the spinster witch living in the woods, I told my self, and scowled at the wall and at myself. If father heard ye, he'd give ye a good and right tannin'.

"Ye're not supposed tae talk with yer mouth full," Edrig said.

"Your mum aksed me!" he defended with a scowl. He looked back at me after swallowing. "He went outside to glare at the ground until it spontaneously combusts. He does that to clear his head sometimes."

"It's 'asked', stupid," Edrig muttered under his breath, and I cuffed him over the head for the language.

I nodded my thanks, put on a cloak, took my plate and his, a wineskin, and went outside, pulling the door shut with my foot. The cold air was like a column of water, harsh and sudden in contrast with the warmth of my home. Darkness was falling fast, the sun dipping beneath the horizon, casting long shadows of the trees over the frozen ground.

I found him there in the chill, sitting on my front step; he said nothing as I sat down beside him on the icy wood boards and handed him dinner, a thick mixture of rice and green lentils and onions that tasted better than it looked. He didn't argue, only accepted the token and spooned food into his mouth, a natural action that came without thought.

We ate in peace, watching snow settle lightly, melting in the puddles of goop that were yet to frost over and clinging to lashes. His were black as his hair and long enough to braid. They all but brushed his cheeks when he blinked. Any lass would be envious of lashes like his. Was it a Dwarf trait, or a Thorin trait? The Dwarf race could not be all ugly little cave-dwellers. The lads were hardly what one might call hideous, and though they were only boys I had a hard time imagining they would grow to be less than charming at the least. Thorin himself was not what I had though a Dwarf to be. It was a small fraction to judge off, surely, but they were not ugly. In fact I had quite forgotten where I had heard that their kind were horrendous stunted men. It was a simple fact of life much as the skies were blue and fire was hot. Only, why?

What else had I falsely taken for a fact of life?

When I looked and found he was finished I took my wineskin from my cloak pocket and extended it to him. He arched a brow.

"Yer nephew said ye needed a drink." His other brow came up. I chuckled to myself, ducking my head. "Paraphrasing. I can recognize the need for a drink when I see one."

"Ale?" he asked, sounding a little hopeful. I had promised to see if I had any when he mentioned he didn't much have a taste for wine but I was never one for ale, myself, so wine was all I had in my stores and easily the only thing not running out. I spent far too much of my meagre income on it, but that had never stopped me.

I shook my head, "Wine."

"Elves' drink," Thorin growled, but accepted it with enthusiasm, taking a long swig from the neck, swallowing what must've been half the skin and handed it back to me with a curt nod. I threw my head back and drank, the scarlet liquid bitter on my tongue and warm in my belly.

"He's awake now," I said. "The worst is behind ye."

He nodded, then after a long silence said, "You spoke of a man yesterday. Carrig, I believe?"

"Ah… Mm, he is the healer here in Loch."

"I was under the impression that you were."

"Oh, nay: I am only the resident witch; an old hag livin' by her lonesome in the wood, craftin' dark potions and kissin' frogs and castin' draught spells."

Thorin inched away from me none too subtly and I laughed.

"Would it bother ye?" I asked, "if I dabbled in the old arts?"

"Witchcraft is the work of the Dark Lord. It is not a matter to jest over: do not presume I would not turn you in if I found proof." I chuckled and ducked my head.

"Ye'd not be the first, either. Twice I've been on trial and twice I've been proven innocent. The Valar must favor me tae have blessed me with such luck twice over." I drank again. "I rotate: here, Southwatch, Blackpool, The Fold; once every autumn I relocate for the season, then come back with the first winter snows," I explained. "Carrig is the healer here, and I help where I am allowed. I treat migraines, take care o' pregnant women and look after the people he already treated, report their progress back tae him because he cannot go very far from home."

"If you are a caretaker only, where did you learn everything you have done for Kíli?"

"Experience, at most times," I sighed. "'Tis a harsh teacher, but an effective one indeed. Fifteen years o' lots o' trial and almost as much error." I drank again. "Comfortin', isn't it? Kennin' the life o' yer lad rests in the hands o' an amateur?"

He said nothing, and it was a little gratifying that he gave me none of his true thoughts. I drank, passed the skin, and he drank also.

"Is that wise?" he asked, holding up the pouch. I looked at it long and hard, and then looked at him.

"What is necessary is not always what is wise."

"Sound philosophy," he commented, holding the wineskin up as if in toast, then threw his head back again. "Will he have any problems in the future?"

I shook my head. "Nay. The puncture in his shoulder was superficial. He did not even need stitches. My main concerns are not concerns anymore. He will be well after a fortnight, if the poison left him entirely. Ye, on the other hand…"

"I need to work, lass. I thank you for your help, but I am not here to sit idly."

"Aye, and I need tae make sure ye don't choke tae death on yer own blood. No less'n a fortnight, ye hear?"

"I couldn't expect you to understand," he snapped, and I glared, gritting my teeth at his presumptuous words.

"Oh, I understand better than ye imagine. Good night, sir," I snapped, got up and took our plates back inside, shivering a little as I shook snow off of my boots. I washed the dishes and set up sleeping arrangements in the sitting room for Fíli.

Thorin came inside some time later, just as Fíli was preparing for bed. He didn't apologize and though I did not expect it of him it still stung.

Don't be an idiot, I told myself. He's a man, they don't have to apologize to women for anything.

I thought he was different.

You always think people are different. Look where it got you.

"If I may trouble you for a map," Thorin said to me once the kids have settled, "I am unfamiliar with the area."

My first instinct was to tell Edrig to take Thorin, but I quickly batted that thought away. Not in an age. I didn't have a map so I gave him a torch and directions, and then tried to help him back into his armour and weapons. He batted my helping hands away, stating he could dress by his own.

"It will be the season o' the wolves soon," I told him as I stood outside in the chilly night with him. "Be careful." He looked past my shoulder to the closed door and the guilt at sending him away returned, as it had with everyone. "They are safe with me. I will take care o' them. I promise."

He didn't ease at my assurance but he did turn to leave. I saw him off, watching his torch shrink into the distance, then went inside to the children. Fíli and Kíli were enthusiastically snoring. I added more logs to the fire, sending a rain of sparks into the chimney, then went over to the two boys. I pulled Kíli's blanket up to his chin. With colour returning to his cheeks, he looked a little like Edrig. The stench of illness clung to him like a leech but already he looked better. The dark circles under his eyes were fading and his skin was dry and pink with life. He would return to himself soon enough, and then they would all leave and I could put it all behind me like a bad dream.

One winter, three years ago, Edrig was struck with a fever. He had eaten something spoiled and awoke puking in the night as his temperature began to rise. I had done everything in my power to fight it and was confident enough in myself to know how to give him his health back, but as he lay in bed, covered in snow soaked bandages to fight the fever all I could do for days was sit by his side and pray as he fought. He slept and puked and slept and puked for three days and nights and though I knew he would live and be well I could not move from my spot. What if he awoke and I was not there? He would be so terrified! What if he called to me and I didn't hear it? What if he needed his mother and I wouldn't be there to hold his hand and tell him he was all right?

I lit the candle in my window, bid the sleeping boys a good night and sweet dreams, and retired to bed. I held Edrig close to me in the night, chasing sleep. It evaded me for hours, my mind constantly turning back to the children in my home and in my care.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

In the morn I found Fíli up before the sun, sleep still in his eyes and in his movements, but he was sitting, with the furs draped over his shoulder and a sheet of metal in his lap. He had some engraving tools or others in his hands. Edrig had moved the table closer and was sitting on the corner, swinging his legs, asking after whatever Fíli was engrossed in.

"I'm apprenticing for metalwork art," Fíli explained, looking up from his work to look at Edrig. "I want to be able to make jewellery, but before I can create something new I have to know how to decorate something old. See?"

He held up the sheet for my son to take just as I made me way to them, standing over Edrig's shoulder to see the art. It was very skillful for a boy, all the interlocking and twisting lines, shapes I could name easily and shapes I'd never known existed. Complex. Masterful. It had to have taken five years at least to learn, likely more. I frowned.

"Where did ye learn tae dae this? This is gorgeous! I've never seen the like of it before!" Edrig exclaimed. Fíli and I silenced him. He repeated himself in a loud whisper, hardly an improvement but it was better than no improvement at all. "Ma, look! Look at this! See here? Feel it. It's so smooth."

"Fíli, he is right, this is stunnin'!"

"Thank you, Edrig, Missus. And no, I suspect you'd not have. It's a Dwarvish design, and there is little trade that come these ways," Fíli said. "That is why we came so far north," he explained, "Because the sales would be good. Supply and demand and all that. I'm apprenticing for a master of wire art. He can make the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Everyone loves his work, especially mum. That was how I learned about him: if she purchased something from him she talked about it for hours, taking it apart with her eyes, cross examining it. I went to apprentice for him because when I master it I can make her all the jewellery in the world, and she won't have to pay for any of it. She's something of a jeweller herself, but in a different line of work. She made me this bead when I was four. It was the first one she made for me, when my hair was long enough to braid."

"Really? Let me see!" Edrig handed him his work back as he leaned in to inspect a hair decoration that looked expensive enough to purchase me a house and a horse. "Oh my Stars! Fíli, it's so pretty! And tiny! How did yer Ma learn how tae dae this? Loch doesn't have a jeweller, but when the trade season comes we get some necklaces and rings here and there. No one's ever come here just tae make crafts. Ye're goin' tae be sought after by everyone! Ye just wait. All the lasses will be linin' up tae get somethin'."

"Is that silver?" I asked, and he nodded proudly, proclaiming it was pure. "I don't ken about yer way o' life, but never show that bead here again. It will be stole off ye faster than ye can say yer name. What ye have in yer hair is more money than I make in six moons, and not all people have good intentions."

"Oh. Thank you for warning me, Missus. I'll tell Kee as well when he wakes up. Mother learned metalwork when she was a girl. It was a fancy of hers when she was young, but it was many years before she could truly invest herself in her passion. Mostly she spent much of her time in the jewellery stalls at the market, but once we could afford it she became her apprenticeship. She tells us she is still learning, but we don't really believe it. I have seen everything she has ever made, and I really do not believe there is anything left for her to learn of the craft. I suppose I got much of my passion from her, but Uncle says seeing her was only encouragement to pursue what was already singing to my blood. I'm not entirely certain which it is," she shrugged. "I suppose I have my entire life to find out, thought I doubt it will be of much consequences to me when I grow older."

"It only matters that ye love it," Edrig said. "I wish I could ken what I'm good at."

"My mother says your heart knows what it wants. You only must learn to hear it. Or, well, at least try to understand where it takes you. I don't really understand that, myself. All I know, when I tried this for the first time my hands knew what to do, so I let them guide me."

"Ma says the only thin' my hands ken how tae dae is breakin' things." I cuffed him. He winced. "I say her hands are only good at hittin' me in the head." I cuffed him again. Fíli sniggered into his hand.

"I think you're really good at making other want to hurt you."

"Shut up. No one is talkin' tae ye," Edrig said, crossing his arms.

"You are talking to me, stupid. Have been for the past fifteen minutes."

Edrig huffed.

I prepared food and Kíli woke as we settled to eat, Fíli pleading with the lad to take a few spoons of oatmeal porridge. Kíli insisted he wasn't hungry, and I believed him, but he needed sustenance. I asked him the same questions again as I changed his bandages (What is your name? What is the year? Who is your brother? Your Uncle? When were you born?) and had to take a moment when he answered, "The year twenty-eight sixty-four of the Third Age. I want to sleep. Can I sleep now?" I checked his forehead but Fíli stopped me.

"Yes. He is correct."

I stared. I stared for a long time, back and forth between the brothers.

"Lads… how old are ye?"

"I'm fifty one and Kee is forty six. Is there a problem?"

"Just a small one… I think I need tae sit down," I said, and did that. I sat for a long time, trying to process it, trying to categorize it all, to understand how they could be one and a half times my age and look as young as my five and ten year old son.

"Dwarves live longer," Kíli eventually said, and even as he looked about to continue he closed his eyes and went back to sleep. Fíli nodded, brushing his brother's hair from his face, stroking his cheek.

"We will be in our majority soon. A little more than ten years for me. Little more than fifteen for Kee. That's why Uncle took us with, so that we can go by our own when we are older. How old are you?"

"It is rude tae ask a leddy her age, young sir," I said, even as he was twenty years my senior. He looked down at his hands in his lap.

"Begging your pardon, Missus."

I pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

"Tell me then, about this art o' yers," I said. His face opened up wide and brighter than the sun itself as he launched into a tale of how he came by his passion, recounting memories from five, to, fifteen years ago, twenty. He told us a little more about his mother's love for jewellery, less so for its beauty and more for its crafting process, the care in the details, the precision, the patience, the piece of heart every creator leaves in what they bring into the world. He came by his passion from hours spent beside her as she crafted. He showed Edrig and I a few of the things he had made on the way here.

"Fíli, these are stunnin'!" I said, holding a piece up to follow the intricate patterns in the metal. "A lad ye are, now; people will gather from far and wide tae buy yer work when ye are older." He blushed and ducked his head, muttering his thanks into his nose.

"Does Kíli share yer passion?" Edrig asked.

"Kíli?" he scoffed. "Kíli would sooner chase trolls and climb trees than think abut his future. But, that's alright. I will take care of us both and, when he's older, we can both take care of mother and… well, of mother and Uncle Thorin." He looked away and I pretended not to notice his slip up. Whatever it was, he was entitled to keep it from me.

He was silent for some time, tinkering away as Edrig spoke of his own passions, and I watched his every movement. He sighed. His sigh said, 'ask me why I'm sighing'. I indulged him.

"What is it?"

"I… I have never sold anything before, is all. I am… It's stupid, I know, but I'm nervous." He blushed and looked away.

I smiled. "Lad, people will love yer work. I cannot promise they will be able tae afford it, we are not a very rich town, but I do promise they will all love it. This is what ye came here for, besides. Tae practice. Trust me: the first few days will be hard, but ye become accustomed tae it."

Fíli smiled and nodded, clearly having gotten the encouragement he was looking for.

Thorin came not a quarter hour later and said he spoke to a man who directed him to another man who would have a job for him. Fíli told him he was practicing with the carving so he didn't have to worry about the lad being focussed or about having something to sell by week's end.

"Yes, Uncle Thorin, I remember why we came here. Missus… Missus healer saw my crafts. She and Edrig said I'm very good at it!" he proclaimed. Yes, proclaimed, like some grand announcement that defined a generation, and the pride in his voice and his eyes made my heart smile in my chest.

"Asíra," I said. He nodded.

"Missus Ahseara." I suppose that was what I got for having his name wrong, also.

"Nay, lad. Ye say it as 'Asheerah'."

"Oh. Sorry, Missus. Asíra?" I nodded and he beamed. He turned to Thorin. "Kíli woke up. He answered all of the questions she asked him correctly, which means his mind is well. We didn't get to the 'what is the last thing you remember?' part yet, but I think we will the next time he wakes up. Missus Asíra said that his fever broke already. He will be a little warm for another day, and then it will go away entirely. She changed the bandages just before breakfast, and I almost puked all over Kíli. Healing is disgusting," he amounted, making a face. Thorin arched a brow and Fíli nodded, curt and firm, and I had a feeling I was missing something that was entirely not about Kíli recovering.

"I believe Missus Asíra can speak for herself," he said, and Fíli looked back down at his hands. I bit my lip, trying not to smile too stupidly.

"Sorry, Missus. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Perhaps next ye would like tae make a diagnosis yerself, lad?" I asked, and grinned and he looked down even more, ears colouring red. I looked at Thorin. "The swellin' has gone down further, but the redness is still there. It wasn't tended tae properly for very long. On top of the poison was the infection. It alone remains, but it is leavin' him also."

"I thought it was worms coming out of his shoulder. I almost puked when Missus Asíra unwrapped the bandaged." The lad shuttered like an earthquake and made a choking noise in the back of this throat, all without looking away from his sleeping brother. He took to stroking Kíli's hair again. I couldn't imagine how it would be, to almost lose a brother, watch him struggle to live, hanging by a thread at the mercy of a stranger.

It wasn't a laughing matter but I cracked a smile at his reaction to what was under the once-white cotton strips, and again now at his reaction to the memory.

"The good news is that his healin' is progressin' well thus far," I said. "We will see tomorrow, but his fate is secure. That is all that's important now. I would like tae take a look at yer stitches, also."

Thorin was silent as I cleaned and changed the dressing on his wounds, lost in thought or memory or fear. He showed it less than Fíli, but anyone looking at him could see he was counting every breath the lad drew with relief. It saddened me that he couldn't, or wouldn't, express it as outwardly as he wanted to.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

I found my discomfort with Fíli and Kíli's presence soon as I was left alone with them. They spoke and were in no shortage of vocabulary and thought. I had taken great care the first three days to keep the three children separated much as the situation would allow, but Edrig and Fíli were at my home every evening for supper. Fíli never failed to bring food for his brother, and he fed Kíli if the lad was awake at the time; Edrig, later in the evening, if not. After the third day he was awake every time Fíli came. It became difficult to bear at an alarming rate. Having only ever been a mother of one and Edrig himself away from home so often now that he was grown, the noise of children overwhelmed me to the point of head aches.

Yet, in the raucous cacophony that was boyhood I found my son spoke so freely when Fíli and Kíli that I hadn't the heart to tell them to shut it and give me peace. He spoke with his mouth and his hands and his body; oftentimes I less heard what he said and more saw it. On the fifth day I realized it was the most I had heard and seen of my son's passion in too many years.

I did that to him, I told myself. I made him quiet. What had the boys done to make him speak again?

On the sixth day Edrig took Kíli outside. They spent near an hour exercising, getting the lad's strength back, coaxing the stiffness from his muscles and joints. I watched them from a window as I worked inside my home. Edrig had Kíli throwing stones with his left hand until he could hit his target again.

"Ma?" Edrig shouted to me, "Can I take Kíli tae check on the traps?" I gave my permission and the two vanished behind the tree line. They returned with Fíli on the other side of his brother, laughing about something, a bag of scarce food in a sack over his shoulder. A part of me fought to feed them, to cook up a meal for the boys, something hot and fresh and full of care and effort. The other, far more reasonable part reminded me Edrig and I had to survive until the harvest trade.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

On the seventh day Kíli left with his brother after breaking their fast with me. I escorted them both, less so to be with them and more so that I was needed in town at last. Over the hebdomad of taking patients in my home for the inability to actually visit them, it was good to be useful in Loch again. People had come to me with sprained wrists and burns and headaches, and enough of them openly gawked at the Dwarf on my couch, or two at my table. Word spread quickly, and with the fact that Thorin clearly spent some time in my home without an escort became the newest piece of gossip to follow in my tracks. It was quite humiliating, what some people assumed of it. Me, servicing a Dwarf, housing his children. I had little by way of reputation left to ruin and what of it remained with me was precious. I hated the three for it a little bit, though I knew it was hardly their fault. More so mine for my lifestyle choices. Still, it stung to hear the whispers at my back as though I was deaf and stupid.

Let them think me a simpleton harlot, I told myself on the tenth day, The less they think of me, the stronger I become, and didn't cry for the scraps of honour they were stealing from me. After all, I got only quiet whispers. Thorin and the boys got a wide berth and vulgar insults called after them. So I lifted my chin and gazed the onlookers in the eye and put one foot in front of the other and did not falter on my way to Thorin and the lads' room in the Black Rabbit.

"Honestly, Missus Asíra, I am well, I swear it!" Kíli would say when I visited him in the evenings.

"I ken ye are, but the Valar favor the prepared."

"Prepared for what?"

"Anythin', lad. Anythin' and everythin'."

"You should not waste your time on that," Fíli said, not looking up from his tinkering. "Mother tells him that every winter, but he still hardly dresses himself."

"The furs make me look stupid," Kíli protested.

"Better stupid than dead," Edrig said, and continued swooning over Fíli's metalwork. Outmatched, Kíli hung his head and didn't argue. Instead he launched back into whatever tale he was recounting before I had arrived and interrupted. That had begun on the fourth day; the three of them enjoyed their supper and once they had put their dishes away stories and banter ensued. I hadn't the heart to tell them to shut it when the chatter became too much. They talked about the world, about their experiences in it, their philosophies, their beliefs. It was good, seeing other points of view through the eyes of unlike-minded people, made them wiser. We were too poor to afford Edrig's education. I had taught him what I knew, but I only knew so much. It was good, them learning from one another.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

"Don't encourage them, Edrig," I had chastised on the tenth day, after he explained that jumping from a rooftop was perfectly safe if the snowbank beneath was tall enough. "Fíli's back is still recoverin' and if either o' them turns up at my door in a moon's turn with a broken leg, ye can set and secure it." Likewise, the lads were told to cut the stories short before my son got it in his head to go looking for faeries and magical precious gems in the tunnels underneath the village.

I should not have mentioned those in particular, because that started an hour-long lesson, courtesy of Edrig, on how hundreds of years ago the tunnels were dug to make a quick escape in the case of an Orc raid. He said some of the tunnels were crumbling, and the lads said, "That's alright: we can go together. We can tell you which tunnels are safe," and that in turn turned into a lesson on how Dwarves can 'talk' (talk? Talk how?) to stone, in as few revealing details as the lads could afford to give without breaching some line or other regarding disclosure and privacy.

Fíli's back healed, and Thorin's sling came off for short periods of time, as well as the brace I made for his ankle, but his ribs still needed more time. He started working for the local blacksmith as soon as I cleared him for manual labor, warning half a dozen times about stopping if something starts hurting and explaining in vivid detail what might be the consequences of ignoring my words because of male pride. He agreed, but was all the same relived to learn that it was only a few short weeks, a fortnight at most, before he was back in best health. We bargained for him working only on light things like fixing bent spoon and leaking pots and horseshoes until he was fit for heavy lifting.

"Please be careful," I had begged him.

"I had seen far worse than this, las," he had told me. I believed him, had seen the evidence of it rippling in rough pale scars across his skin, but it only solidified my conviction.

"Precisely why I say you have hurt enough. Please look after yerself, or I will have tae. Dae ye want me tae fuss over ye? I am a mother, I ken how tae fuss, and I will dae it," I threatened, wagging my finger for theatrics' sake. "In all seriousness, sir. Please."

"What is it to you?" Thorin's snapped. "What do you gain in this?"

"Not everybody has an ulterior motive."

"Then you know less of the world than I had thought."

"I ken plenty well o' the cruelties o' life, sir," I snapped back at him as I stood from the bed, having finished with his back and shoulder, giving him a clean bill of health. Then, softer, "It does not mean it's blessings are lost."

There was a darkness in his mind. Some part of me, for a fleeting moment, wanted to hold a candle to his eyes until it cast the shadows into brilliant warm light, or step into the darkness with him. Instead I simply came to see Kíli and Fíli every day and tended to Thorin's injuries from the smithy while I was at it. Perhaps if I did it often enough he would start believing he deserved it.

It was without my consent that I found Edrig spent every free hour of his days at the Black Rabbit with Fíli and Kíli, but I didn't confront him. They were good lads, hardworking and lively, with a smile and a helping hand never far. They were a good influence, a fine set of role models for my boy to follow, lack though they may maturity. I alone could not be the only one he looked up to, and the Dwarves were a better choice than some of the ones available to Edrig about the town.

"Is my arm going to be alright?" Kíli asked me one day, and for the life of me he looked like I had condemned him to having his entire arm amputated. "I use a bow, you see, so my arms and back have to be strong. If my shoulder is too damaged I won't be able to draw properly, Missus," he said, and his eyes looked close to watering. I placed my hand on his healed shoulder and reassured him that he will have forgotten his injury in less than a season.

"So, I won't need any further treatment? No operation?"

"Nay, lad. I promise. Even if ye did, it would be costly. And, I should imagine, ye would like a healer with more experience than I."

"You seem plenty experienced to us," Kíli said, and I smiled, my cheeks heating up.

"Thank ye, lad, but I had meant someone with decades o' it and professional trainin', not fifteen years o' trial-and-error tactics in the hands o' a self-taught Woman."

Eyes widened. "You never studied?" they asked, together, and I shook my head.

"Where would I?"

"With a medic?" Kíli offered, and I laughed.

"I hardly think a master o' medicine would take up a girl as an apprentice."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a girl," I explained, trying not to be angry. They were young still, this much I understood, despite the beards and matured bodies. They likely didn't understand yet, weren't taught the social ways. The brothers looked at one another, blinked, and shrugged as if coming to a conclusion I was not privy to.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Fíli asked, and for the first time I wondered that maybe a different race meant a different culture than my own and maybe things were done a little different for them as they appeared, at least to me, genuinely confused by what I said.

I made no further comment on the subject and it was changed quickly enough without me. I left, Edrig staying with them, as Fíli began to explain to my son some of the engraving technique he was taught, one of the hundreds, showing off his latest works of art that would sell for a fortune to anyone with eyes and an appreciation for rare and beautiful things, things that were entirely one-of-a-kind. I couldn't hope to afford any of what he made, and that saddened me more than I cared to admit as I stole glances over his shoulder while he worked.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

On the eighteenth day I stopped by the smithy. I was delivering dyed cloth to the seamstress and as the forge was only down the street I passed by it on my way to the apothecary. It was hot, ripples distorting the air around it and in the cold of winter and warmth of summer alike the workers were often scantly clothed. I had several things I needed mending and so as I stood just at the entrance I caught sight of the shorter of two figures. Or, I caught his back, but it gave me enough to focus on, his shirt sticking to him, dark with sweat, hiding little, leaving me imagining even less. His back, muscles working as he moved, his arms, the veins popping out as he flexed. I watched the beads of sweat roll down the back of his neck, his dark hair knotted in a bun at the top of his head, watched the precision, the single-minded intent, the dedication, watched the concentrated furrow in his brow—

—And he was looking at me.

"Can I help you, lass?"

I blushed and looked down, biting my lip and closing my eyes against the embarrassment of being caught looking, like some green girl watching the first boy she ever fancied. He was quite something to look at, a dark and mysterious creature to be admired from afar, yes, but I was hardly a fanciful lassie in the bloom of her youth. I had more decorum than that.

A girl can look, I thought, and dismissed it just as quickly as it had come to me.

"Yes, actually. I have some things that need mending. A few odd trinkets from home? Operation supplies and the like, and my scales are off by a little bit," I explained as he set down his tools and came over to inspect what I held out to him, fetching it from my basket, then nodded and motioned me around the back of the smithy to the office, where he put it down in a log.

"Should be two days, lass," he said, and I nodded my thanks. The smithy was warm, so very warm, even with the front wall absent, so before moving on with my day as per usual I sat on a barrel of rainwater outside, between patients and chores and errands, and it was one of the few times in a week I was idle. Something always needed doing; dyeing fabrics, taking food from the glass garden to the markets, the Town Hall kitchen was never too full of kitchen hands, and the barn always needed extra workers. I was hardly allowed to study properly, so if I was not tending to injuries and illnesses I was running across town with everyone else, looking for a way to help. The smithy was a warm break in which I sat with a medical journal in my lap and with wine at my lips.

"Would you like something else, lass?" I admit my yelp of surprise was very undignified as I leaped into the air. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said when he saw it was me.

"Pardons, sir. I was only… I dae not ken what I was doin', actually. Restin' a little, I suppose. Forgive me. Good day." I left, but I came back again the next day, and the day after that, warming my back as I unfolded one of my medical journals and read it over, adding things or changing them as need be. I never stayed for more than a quarter hour, but the warmth of the smithy chased away the shiver in my bones, and neither Thorin nor the smithy owner had protested, so I hoped it was an allowance to remain.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

On the twenty-third day Thorin put coins in my hand and asked for a meal from the tavern.

We sat together on the bench he had pulled outside, our backs to the warm wall as we ate.

"Surely you jest?"

"Nae!" I laughed. "Is it not so among yer people?"

"We do not judge age by the internal function of a lass' body," he insisted, "Only one's number of years. Twelve?"

"Twelve. That girl was no child," I explained. He seemed quite flabbergasted, looking over his shoulder to the girl he made cry in calling her a babe for her unsubtle advances. She was not the first to approach him, a fact he made no secret that he found great discomfort in, less for the attention – I suspected he knew well the appeal of him – and more for the fact that every lass to do so was younger than I – and his nephews were my senior.

"And you, lass? What is your age?"

"Have ye nae propriety, sir? Ye never ask a leddy her age!"

"I mean no insult, lass. Only to know where to call you a young girl."

"A young girl I am not, sir, o' that I assure ye," I laughed, taking a drink from my skin. Thorin did the same with his ale. "I have a son," I said, sobering up. "I could not be a young girl if I wished it."

"You raised him alone?"

My face reddened and I looked away. Edrig was a bastard boy. This was a fact unknown to anyone; they all believed me a widow. Edrig was the only one in Loch who knew of my mistake, and it weighed on him more than he showed.

"I flailed in the dark alone. My mother had made parentin' look so easy, she was graceful in it unlike anyone I have ever seen. When Edrig came intae the world I learned very quickly how impossible motherhood was." I drank and changed the subject. "What o' yer own home?"

"I had a home, once, a long time ago."

"And where ye live now?"

"It is the home of Fíli and Kíli. The only one they have known." There was regret in those words, because they deserved better. They deserved the place Thorin thought of when I had asked him, wherever that may be.

"I suppose all one might dae is the best with what they are given," I shrugged.

"And if one is given nothing?"

"Everyone is given somethin', they only must ken how tae make it intae somethin' more."

"And you?" he asked.

"I am a woman and a healer."

He nodded. "Ay, that you are."

"And who are ye?"

"A soldier," and answered without a moment's hesitation. I scoffed.

"I asked who ye are, not who the world tells ye tae be," I said, then stood and bid him a good day, taking his plate and mug back to the tavern.

We lunched together as often as our schedules would allow after that, sitting on the bench side by side. With the summer came trade so I refilled my stores of grain and took to baking bread again. I would bring him a slice when I could, and in thanks he mended my cutlery.

Fíli and Kíli, I suspected, had inherited their endless supply of energy from their Uncle's side of the family, but where they were discord and chaos of words and hands and hair, Thorin was dedicated to one task and he was single-minded in his work. He worked from soon after sunup all the way until evenfall, when the sun began hiding underneath the horizon, and was tireless in it as far as I could tell, and if my gaze drifted to him as he worked, if my pace slowed as I passed the forge, it was only in appreciation of power and focus and dedication. It was mesmerizing. Often I found myself watching him work as I passed by. I hoped my son would find the same passion in whatever he did in his life; his choices, his job, his family.

I came in the evenings to collect Edrig, who had officially incorporated himself into their room's furniture and the lads' lives, and I stayed… I didn't know why. I knew it was rude, after hard day's work they wanted their rest, they didn't need a stranger in their home. But more often than not I found myself engrossed so completely in the tales the boys told, each day more free with their words as weeks flew by and summer warmed the world.

They talked about their mother sometimes, and other times about, "This one time in a village of Men when we got chased by an angry old man with a stick because Fíli knocked over a stand of what had to be a hundred apples," or, "This one time we stole Uncle Thorin's ale in a tavern and drank it. I was thirteen and Kee was eight and we got a hangover and a tanning from mother and Uncle for it," or, "We love Uncle Dwalin, but when we have weapons training with him we kind of hate him because he's trying to kill us by exhaustion."

I started telling stories as well, once the lads had themselves migrated into my home on the evenings that Edrig didn't join them in their room, of how I came to Loch, that I'm not always in this village, of some of the patients I have treated when traveling between towns. I'd seen an Icebear once, and they hung on my every word as I tried and failed to draw a picture with literary terms, of the huge bear white as the snow and tall as a man on its four paws. The following day Kíli took a book from the library and brought it back with him and the boys spent hours pouring over the animals described in it, some of which they had never heard of before, much less seen.

Sometimes Thorin talked also, and in those times I think he quite forgot Edrig and I were there. His words were so distant, lost in a time long gone. He had a good voice. A beautiful one. He talked about the places he had been and I tried to imagine wide fields of rolling jade grass and mountains scraping the heavens, cities so large one could get lost in the crowd, and nights around a campfire, singing and trading tales as fresh game roasted on the spit.

"Where did ye learn it?" I asked him one night. "Smithing, I mean. Master Cordon praises yer skill very generously. And he is a hard man tae impress."

"I learned metalwork on my father's knee," he told me as we sat at the table in his rooms, the boys asleep in one bed and Edrig having left for home. "Long ago, in a place very far from here." He was sad. So sad, with loss bearing down on him, loss I couldn't quite understand but from the tone of his voice, the look in his eyes, I knew it was a very long time since he had seen his father. It was the first time he talked about his family and, while I was curious, a part of me didn't want to know, and I knew I shouldn't bring it up.

"Yer voice," I said instead. "It sounds like my father's a little. Or maybe it doesn't. I can't quite remember what my father's voice was like," I admitted. "But it's what I associate it with. He used tae read tae me when I was a girl, told me stories about magic frogs and princesses and true love's kisses, about hungry wolves and foolish girls in red cloaks as he tucked me intae bed."

Mother used to chastise him for it, said he was behaving like a mother instead of a father but he only said that she never told me stories and that was it.

"I could fall asleep in the middle of a raging battle if only he continued talkin'. Could imagine Kingdoms and palaces and foreign lands where it was always summer, giant beasts of a yellow coat and the sun around their head, valleys of birds and waterfalls and colour. It wasn't until I was older that I realized he had never actually seen any of what he told me about, but it was as I had seen them myself. You have that kind of voice. A storyteller's voice."

"Where is he?" Thorin asked, after a time, letting silence fall between us again.

"In a place that's very far from here," I said.

"My condolences," he said sincerely, and I almost laughed even as I felt like crying.

"Nay, sir," I said, shaking my head. "He lives still. He and my mother, and my sister and two brothers. They live a moon's journey east o' here." He didn't ask why I had not seen them in so long that I've forgotten the sound of my father's voice, having in my memory only the whisper of a ghost, so I didn't tell him the part of the story that any man or woman would understand, and for the first time felt envious of their culture, and saddened that it wasn't mine as a part of me realized I would be with my family still had I been born a Dwarf.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

On the thirty-second day I was hanging sheets to dry in the yard. I had hunt up a rope and set a basket of wet clothes by my feet. Kíli and Edrig were in the yard with me. They had returned from checking the traps with a few small rodents and quickly skinned and cut them up for me to cook, then ran out to play in the warmth of summer. They silenced for some time and I peered from behind the clothes to check on them.

Edrig held up Kíli's bow, straining to pull back the string, as Kíli pointed into the distance, probably at their decided target. The string snapped out of Edrig's fingers and hit his elbow. He cried out and then growled.

"This is pointless, Kee! I told ye I cannot dae it."

"Not with that attitude you can't. Try again, slower this time. Lift it up, easy, you cannot throw your arm up, you will hurt yourself. Slow, now. Remember to inhale…" The string snapped back, the arrow flew, and disappeared into the trees. "Every arrow you lose me is an arrow you have to make to refill my stores. Focus."

"I am focussin'! This was the tenth one now. Ye make it look so easy."

"It is now, Edrig, but I have held a bow since I was ten. You have never held one in your life."

Kíli stepped around him, chest to my son's back, and guided his bow arm into the air, then did the same with his drawing arm, setting his form.

"Feel for it… Breathe in… Lift… Breathe out and…" The arrow flew, just too far left of there Edrig was aiming. He loaded the bow again. "You hold it too long, and you hold your breath. Never hold your breath, you will hurt your arms and your back."

"Otherwise is too difficult. The string is too tight. I can't see."

"The string is as tight as it must be, stupid. You can see, with your eyes. You aim with your hands, and you lose sight of the target. Aim with your eyes, trust them. They know where the arrow must go. Allow you hands to be guided."

Edrig held the bow up, but put it down immediately.

"I cannot see anythin'!"

Kíli sighed and took the bow. He closed his eyes, pulled the string back, and said, "Aim for me."

Edrig stepped into his space and aimed Kíli's arrow. Kíli released the string and the arrow struck a knot in the trunk of a tree. Edrig squealed and jumped for joy.

"See? You did not aim with your hands, you aimed with your eyes. We must make you stronger. We practice once a day in the evening. I will come to collect you after supper," Kíli said, and Edrig beamed at him. I returned to hanging up laundry. Edrig brought it up with me in the evening and after we ate and cleaned up the lads came by my home not for the first time, Thorin once again with them. The boys went outside to practice and I poured Thorin and I a drink.

It had become something of a ritual after that.

When the nights were warm and Thorin left work late, we would all sit by a fire, myself on the couch and he on the floor between my knees, and I would kneed the stiffness out of his shoulders as the lads played or traded tales or trained in the meadow. He remained there, sitting wrapped in my warmth long after I had worked the knots from his muscles and I gave the wordless comfort of touch gladly. Other times I would curl up on a chair and busy myself with sewing or embroidery. It was the natural thing to do.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

When he learned of my age he choked.

We were in my home. Edrig pled with me to invite Fíli and Kíli to dinner, and with midsummer upon us I stood all day in the kitchen with a crease in my brow and a smile in my heart. Midsummer was a good time, the only truly warm time in Loch. The village hosted a festival as it did every year, but people went home to celebrate with family and friends after the sun came down all the same.

Kíli had taken Edrig from me for two days and two nights and when they returned they carried a boar with them. He was large, too large to be a child, but young all the same. I spent two days taking him apart. Much of the meat was locked way in the cellar, but there was plenty left to prepare. Most of the meat in my home came in the form of rabbits. Edrig could not afford a bow, nor did either of us know how to craft one so we made do with traps. The last time I had large game meat was ten years ago and even that was dry leftovers I had snuck a few bites from while the cook at the Black Rabbit was not looking.

I didn't have the imagination for it but I did have the precision, and so with a number of borrowed recipes I cooked up a small feast, having learned the exact extent of Dwarvish appetite in the time I had spent with the three. They ate like horses and so it was hours before I could tell Edrig to run and get them whenever they were ready.

Dinner was a loud affair, between three children of the same age in face and mind, and it being midsummer and a time of laughter and childishness I let them keep their fun. I had no neighbours to disturb nor anyone to tell me hosting such an event when I myself was the only lass present was improper. We ate and we drank, ale and mead and wine by preference, and Thorin showed his teeth for the first time when Edrig told us all the story of how he almost died, as my boy said.

"So, there we were, Gildred hangin' off me like a coat, me trippin' over my feet, sprintin' in the dark. It was pitch black, couldn't see our hands in front o' our faces, it's pourin', the cow on our heels, and her owner chasin' after us though the rain with a pitchfork in his hands! He was runnin' after us screamin' bloody at Gildred and I. I kept runnin', trying' not tae fall in the dark and and explainin' tae him that we were just asking her for directions, not stealin' the Damned thing. I don't think I'll ever drink again after that: every time I see wine I can hear the man screamin' behind me, threatenin' tae cut my arms off!"

The lads burst into laughter, bits of food falling out of their mouths every now and again while they tried to catch it in their hands. I buried my face in my hands, utterly humiliated because this was not the kind of talk fit for the dinner table. Thorin just looked at his lads, and maybe he thought no one was looking, or he genuinely didn't care in that moment if somebody did, but he smiled. It was small, barely there on his face, but it was bright in his eyes all the same. I smiled also, much wider than he and the dinner continued in fits of cackles and giggles and children talking over one another.

It was the fact that Edrig was fifteen and Fíli and Kíli were fifty-one and forty-six respectively that brought up the matter of ages.

"Thirty," I said, my words slurred a little from the wine, when Kíli asked me how old was I, really, and drinks ended up on the table and the floor.

"I don't believe you, Missus," Kíli proclaimed, coughing up the rest of his ale. "Sixty, at least. I'd not give you a day over seventy, of course, Missus, but no less than sixty, either," he said, shaking his head in denial. I laughed, doubling over my food.

"Dwarves have longer lives indeed. Ye are six and forty and yet tae be an adult by yer countin'; a middle aged man by mine."

"You said Men live for shorter, Uncle, not that they had the lifespans of a cat!" Fíli accused, shocked, and got a cuffing on the back of his head for his troubles.

"How long do you expect to live?" Kíli asked me. I shrugged.

"Sixty years. Seventy, if health is kind. Loch's healer is seventy three. In my professional opinion he has perhapse another two years. No more than that. He is sickly and old. Myself, I have lived half o' my life so, relatively speakin', I am yet older than ye."

"Number say otherwise," the blonde said. I arched a brow.

"How long dae ye think I have been an adult?"

He thought for a long time, then said, "Five years?"

"Fifteen, lad. I became a flowered woman when I was twelve, and a woman grown at fifteen. Almost married, I did. Had this pain in my arse," I said, ruffling Edrig's hair. He cringed away, straightening his hair with a scowl, and I chuckled. "And ye've yet tae reach adulthood yerself. Conclusion: I am older," I explained, but he shook his head and muttered the numbers said otherwise again. "How old are ye?" I asked Thorin instead of arguing sums and semantics.

"How old do you think?"

I tried to calculate and averaged eighty, feeling it safe to more than double the age he looked to be.

"Older."

"Ninety?" I tried, but he shook his head. "Not one hundred. I don't believe it."

"Not one hundred, lass, in that you are correct: more than one hundred and fifty, and yet in the height of my prime."

I gaped like an idiot because that was how I felt and then, with all the eloquence of a lady, blurted, "Ye're older than my great grandmother!" and earned a round of laughter from the three children.

"'Tis you that is younger than Kíli," he said.

"How? That is not possible! It is mad!"

"We reach maturity at forty-two. Our faces change very little for many more years; we come into our old age only beyond two hundred."

"You mean tae say Fíli and Kíli will always look so youthful? I was under the impression they were children like my Edrig?"

Perhaps it was the wine or something I said but honest to Stars, he chuckled.

"Matured in body, hardened for battle, yes. Grown, however, is another matter." I laughed at that, throaty and full, because a greater truth has not been spoken in many years. Children indeed, despite the numbers. "They will be battle ready at sixty five." His eyes darkened and, sobering up, he said, "That was the old way, in my youth." Before poverty and famine and wandering the world like beggars. I changed the subject.

We continued to talk as we ate, and they praised the cook for the meal, calling it the best they've had in moons and considering they were first on the road and now in an inn, I almost believed them.

"Ye flatter me too much, lads," I told them as I cleaned up the table once we were with full bellies and lazy smiles. The boys went to play outside in the fresh summer air, and I cleaned up.

Thorin sat at the table and stared at it as it emptied. It was quiet for long and just as I was about to start washing the dishes he said, "I never properly thanked you, lass." I frowned and turned to look at him.

"For what?"

"Kíli. Fíli. Myself."

"Aye. Kind but foolish. Ye've said."

"Aye, kind, and foolish in equal measure. We could have hurt you, and you would have been helpless against us."

"If that is yer way o' givin' thanks, it needs improvement," I said, then shook my head. "Ye would never hurt me. And ye most certainly would never hurt my son," I said, because it was as much a fact of life as that the sky was blue and water was wet.

"You cannot know that," he said, looking up at me, and stood.

"I can. And I dae. I've seen how ye are. With yer nephews… with my son. He never stops askin' ye questions when ye talk, interrupting tae ask about this thin' or other. Ye ne'er raise yer voice at him, ne'er become impatient or snap at him or hit him, or tell him he is stupid. Ye'd ne'er hurt us… If it makes ye feel better, I slept with a knife in me hand when the three o' ye slept in my house the first night."

"There is some sense in you then, after all." I laughed and looked down at the floor. "Next time it would not be us, and they will hurt you. Such kindness may be the death of you," he told me, and the atmosphere was suddenly thick and heavy. I leaned back on the counter and chewed my lip as he stood before me.

"Perhaps. But what is there in this world but the kindness of strangers?"

It was how I survived when I ended up in the street, lived on what mercy the people I've never met gave me. I was a woman, a girl, pregnant and unwed, in a village I'd never heard of, much less been to. Without a name, without a title, without a copper coin in my purse. I earned my keep in a tavern by cleaning tables and serving mead and meat for years, all because it was the innkeeper's wife who found me crowded into a corner behind her husband's tavern and not the innkeeper himself.

When I birthed Edrig, all at once I was a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, and in that mess 'daughter' became lost. A protector and provider for a newborn babe when I could hardly protect and provide for myself.

"Would ye not have done the same?"

He shook his head. "I have a sister, two nephews and a mountain range the safety of which depends on making the hard decisions. I could not afford the kindness that you had shown."

And it was the way he said it, the weight behind it, like the mountain range was carried on his back, that made me feel as if it was I who was the small and he the great. It suddenly struck me that his tale was, while more graphic, riddled with loss and blood, little different than mine. A caretaker, a protector, a provider, a role model, a parent despite having no children of his own, and it had come to him all at once and much too soon, and in that maelstrom of titles 'son' ceased being one of them.

"We should be leaving," he said, and I nodded mutely. We said our goodnights as they left my home. I finished cleaning with Edrig and we went to bed. I dreamed that night and I remembered the dream for the first time in a long time. I dreamed of valleys and mountains and forests, and there was a sadness there, of someone forced to make the hard decisions more than he deserved. I dreamed of a voice, painting tales of far and wide like when I was a girl; a storyteller's voice.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

They sang.

It rumbled like thunder through my home, echoing in my very bones, vibrating through my soul. They sang of glorious and wretched battle, of a history forgotten and a people buried, ashes of a culture in the cinders of death. They sang of sin, and of restitution, and of hope, and of cold. They sang, and we all cried.

Thorin used to play the harp when he was younger, but time and travels kept him from it. Now he carried with him a small hand harp that sang more beautiful than summer birds. I found it fitting, that the rough, thick fingers created such beautiful music that filled the woods with a kiss of life and despair. The delicate instrument in a labouring man's hands was unthinkable, knowing what those hands have done, how many a life they had cut down, and yet the gentleness filled my chest and my belly with a warmth far greater than any wine. Fíli and Kíli had fiddles, clever hands and nimble fingers coaxing tunes heartbreaking and lively from their lips.

We danced, we sung, we laughed and cried for the loss of a people that I surely have never heard of. When the night grew dark and sleepy I sat in a chair with a blue cloak in my lap and grey thread in the eye of a needle while Thorin told a story to the boys. They all settled into furs on the floor, lazy in the aftermath of Midsummer's week-long celebration and sacrificial ceremony. The bonfire had been grand, and everyone brought something to offer to the Valar as thanks for an early spring and a plentiful trade.

The fire burned hot, crackling in the pit, but our lads curled around each other for comfort and warmth and safety. Thorin and I drank wine enough to last us a week. Their soft snores lulled us both into security and a happiness that only a mother or father can know.

"Where did ye learn tae play?"

"In my home, a very long time ago."

"What made ye choose the harp?"

"My mother played it every day when she carried me. She said it was the magic she shared with me in her womb that fostered my love for music. She was wrong."

"Oh?"

"I do not recall the music in her womb. I recall the music on her knee."

I smiled, but I felt like crying.

"Where did you learn to read?"

"My father was the coin keeper in my home town. He always said, when one knew how tae read, one knew how tae dae everythin'. He taught all o' his children the arts o' the written word. I used tae hate it. I wanted tae run amok and play and learn embroidery, not sit and stare at squiggles on a page." It wasn't until I became a healer that I understood what he meant. I would not be here without his teachings. "I loved embroidery above all else. I could sit for hours and draw stories with thread. My mother used tae makes the most lovely tapestries. I wanted tae be as skilled as she. Still dae."

I referred to Kíli's charcoal sketch again to make sure I was getting the right pattern.

"You were of noble blood?"

"Nay. My home village was a small one, but my father was close friend with the Lord there. He was born into a financially fortunate family and learned tae read from Master Selgii, the then-future Lord o' my village. He was very good with sums, so he became the coin keeper, and our family became even more financially fortunate," I explained.

"And yet you are here."

"And yet I am here," I echoed, and he didn't ask anything else. I continued to embroider quietly, and Thorin continued to play, well after midnight. He slept in the chair that night, and I on the couch, too exhausted from the festivities to go to the room.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

Summer was when Edrig showed Fíli and Kíli the hot springs, and the three vanished for hours at a time, to the point that I had long ceased worrying if ever I came home to find it empty. I spoke to him, reminded him not to get attached.

"They will leave soon," I said one night over dinner. Edrig nodded.

"I ken," he said. A pause, then, "They will leave soon, Ma," and in his mouth the words meant something else entirely. I smiled and nodded, but my heart felt a little heavier in my chest.

"I ken." And that was that.


	3. The Bear and the Maiden Fair

**_Strangers When We Meet:_**

 _ **Author:** Nicky._

 _ **Rating:** Mature for sexual content in part three._

 _ **Disclaimer:** The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to Mr. Tolkien, and in part I suppose to Mr. Jackson as well. This is a non-profit work for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here. Credits go where credits are due :))_

 _ **Pairings:** Thorin/OFC (Original Female Character), minor Bagginshield at the very end, because I'm a shipper and I couldn't not, Fíli &Kíli&OMC friendship and teenage shenanigans._

 _ **Summary:** Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget._

 _ **Chapter Notes:** Right so, um… chapter features a lot of unresolved issues from the past, discussion of loss and death, and drinking problems. Fun, huh? No but in all seriousness, this is a much more loaded chapter than the other two. Also, um… smut. Now before we go on I think I need to say that, having absolutely no personal experience myself, I had to awkwardly stumble through it until it resembled something presentable. It's sex with feelings, with an emphasis on feelings. As in, 2K words of feelings and 500 words of smut. It's the first time I've ever written smut, and I'm very nervous about this :((_

 _ **Special Thanks:** I'd like to profoundly thank onoheiwa for your brilliant insight and support and help. This would not have turned out without you! onoheiwa took the time to help make my work better and just, thank you, so much! Your help was amazing :)) Further thanks to every single person who read and followed and faved and left a review. You are amazing, and I love you!_

 _ **Story:** …_

* * *

 _3 / The Bear and the Maiden Fair_

 _"Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued."_

 _― Richard Siken, Crush_

* * *

"Dwarves," I slurred, "are boxes."

We sat in a corner booth in the tavern attached to the Black Rabbit. Or rather, the Black Rabbit was attached to it. Loch experienced its share of traveling traders and merchants not dissimilar of Thorin, Fíli and Kíli, but for the most part the Black Rabbit was there for those drunkards who were too far gone to make it home without breaking their necks, or starting a cattle rampage. I was nursing my sixth cup of wine when the Dwarf came downstairs and quite abandoned whatever he left his rooms for in favor of sitting with me and sharing the drink I offered him, thought he drank much less than I.

"I will not take offence. For now," he grumbled under his breath. I hiccuped and snorted.

"No. Nonooo, ye'don' understand… Dwarves: are like boxes. Little and dark and square and… hairy."

"You are drunk, lass."

"Mm, like a… Skunk. And ye are like a box, ye are. Short and square and nondespritred… nondesarpated… non…"

"Nondescript," he offered eventually, and I nodded.

"Yes. That. Like a box, or a bear. A box bear."

"I should think that is enough wine for one night, lass," Thorin said, taking my cup from me and snapping his fingers at one of the wenches. He instructed her to not serve me anymore, to which she answered she wasn't planning to. I shook my head, trying to protest, to explain that he didn't understand.

"Like boxes…" I slurred, folding my arms on the table and putting my head down.

When I woke up in the morning with an unholy hangover in a rented room in the inn, I puked in the chamber pot for what felt like hours, then crawled back into bed and slept until midday. When I woke up a second time I could recall the night before with a surprising amount of clarity, which was not much, but it was enough. I avoided Thorin for close to a week afterward.

"Think nothing of it, lass," he said, when I finally worked up the courage to look him in the eye, with the appropriate amount of redness in my cheeks, one week later.

"I can't think nothin' o' it. It was very improper o' me, tae have said that, and rude, and disrespectful. Ye didn't deserve that. None o' yer people did. I truly am sorry."

"You were drunk. You meant nothing."

"That is the problem! There is truth in wine and I did mean it, and I can't let ye, or myself keep goin' like this. At least allow me tae make it right properly," I begged, standing up from the barrel of rainwater as Thorin relieved himself of his working clothes and put his tools away for the night. "I won't forgive myself if I don't make it up tae ye," I insisted. "Come tae my home with the lads tomorrow after work. I will make dinner for us. Edrig has been askin' me every morn tae invite them again, anyway, and this way I can give a proper apology worthy of the leddy that I should have been."

"Lass…"

"Please? I hardly imagine the food they serve at the tavern is very appetizing once ye've been eatin' it for two and a half moons."

The next evening I was the respectable hostess and lady of the house that I had so few chances to be. I cooked up a meal I recalled my mother making once and retrieved the spare chairs from the shed again. At sundown five were seated at my table, feasting on the food I made, complimenting the cook.

"I like cookin'. The precision, the step-by step: it's calmin'," I explained to the lads.

"Ma never has the patience for it," Fíli quipped. "She's very good at it, but it angers and tires her."

"Aye, I imagine it would, with the two o' ye runnin' about." This started a conversation about the different recipes their mother knew, some of which were vaguely familiar, others I had never heard of. Once dinner was over Edrig pled out of me permission to take the boys to the hot springs. With Thorin's consent the three ran out of my home to the woods, promising not to return too late.

The house left peaceful, I cleaned up on the table and started washing the dishes. Thorin offered to get more firewood and so I directed him to the back of the house for the blocks, warning him that they had yet to be chopped to good size. He brought back chopped wood and I restarted the fire, warming my hands by the hearth before going to the bedchamber to put my apron away.

"I have something for you." I jumped, turning around to find the Dwarf standing in the doorway of my chambers. Suddenly overcome with embarrassment that he was in my chambers – my bed was unmade, night dress hanging off the edge, slippers scattered, medical journals covering my straw mattress – I flushed, rubbing my arms and hustling him out, shutting the door behind us a little louder than necessary.

He took me to the kitchen table and brandished from seemingly nowhere a rolled up cloth. He untied the ropes holding it and rolled it out across my table. Inside were brand new medical instruments ranging from needles of varying shapes and sizes, to scalpels, to clamps, to more. Each had an intricate symbol carved into the handle. Maker's mark. Thorin's mark.

I began to cry, and rushed away to give it an honorary place before I could burst into wailing sobs in front of him. I stayed in my room for five minutes before feeling safe to step out into the kitchen and pouring my thanks upon Thorin. He sat at the table but I didn't joint him, opting to stand by the counter. The farther away, the less likely I was to humiliate myself with something stupid, like hugong him. We shared the silent peace for a long time.

"Why are you here?"

"I'm begging yer pardon, sir?"

"Why here? So far from the village, with no means to protect you and yours."

"Oh." I gave a weak laugh, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear as I finally sat at the table and offered him the other chair, but not before pouring myself wine and him ale. We sat in silence for what felt like a very long time before I gave him an answer. "People seldom take kindly tae anythin' they consider tae be wron'. I seldom take kindly tae bein' lectured on the faults o' my lifestyle. It's rather a mutually appealin' scenario."

"And you raised this up from the ground? By your self?"

"Yer people raised the place where ye live up from the ground by yerselves. I am no less resourceful, nor any less clever, tae have accomplished the feat."

"You shouldn't have to," he told me. Oh, wouldn't that be the day.

"Neither should ye."

"It could not have been easy. Or cheap."

"It never is." Thorin and his people. Me and my son. There wasn't a difference. "Oft we are willin' tea pay great prices for the things we love. It's worth it." He huffed his agreement into his drink. "And ye?"

He didn't answer right away. It was long before words left his mouth, sullen and drowned, hardly audible in the stunted silence of the house, and when he spoke he couldn't look at me, lost in his mind and in his heart.

"When I was a boy my father gifted me a ring with a ruby gem. An old thing of little value and less fancy. One day my sister, a child herself she was then, ate poisonous berries she mistook for blueberries. We… It was a hard time for my people, charitable work was not a luxury any could afford, and I hadn't coin on me enough to pay for her treatment. It was the last thing I had of my father's. I never regretted giving it away." He took a long drink and didn't speak for many minutes. "It felt too much like defeat. Too much like giving up and accepting he would never return to us."

We fell back into silence and I pretended not to notice him blinking moisture out of his eyes.

"My father always told me: death doesn't happen tae the deceased. It happens tae everyone who has tae bury them."

"Mustn't be pleasant, hosting and feeding a corpse."

I gnawed at my lip. "One learns to live with it overtime."

We finished the rest of our drinks without a word, then I poured a second round and we finished that in the same fashion. I was washing the cups in the basin before either of us spoke again.

"Show me your grip," he said suddenly. I frowned and he nodded to my hands. "Show me your grip."

It took me another moment to realize what he was saying, then I took a knife from the counter and held it out the way I would towards an attacker. He scowled as thought the knife had done him an injustice, and approached me, shaking his head.

"You hold it too tight," he said, taking my hand in his and readjusting my hold on the hilt, lighter, fingers more spread out. "Hold it light. Delicate. The way you hold a sewing needle." I scoffed.

"But, if I dae that someone can take it from me."

He shook his head, "You are thinking wrong. Knife," he said, taking it from me by the blade and holding it up, "And hand. But they are not separate. The blade is a part of you, an extension of your arm. It will not be taken if you do not allow it." I bit my lip but nodded. "Get a sheath, one for your forearm, else you reach too far for it and that time can cost you your life. Keep it close at hand," he explained. I nodded.

"You are small, plain, and a lass at that." I tried not to feel insulted, knew logically that the words had not meant to hurt, or belittle, or humiliate, and it was easier than I had expected. There was no malice in his tone, no prejudice. They were a list of tools to use as much as anything else in my medical supply closet. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. "Should you be attacked you want a weapon you can hide but reach at once."

We spent the next quarter hour outside, practicing. He handed me one of his daggers in its sheath and I strapped it to my arm and he taught me three different ways to get the knife in the span of a second while barely moving. When his hands moved over mine, warm and firm and wide, and rough with a lifetime of labor, I felt a young girl again, who fancied some lad from the village and giggling with friends when he looked her way. It made my heart jump a little, his skin against mine, his solid presence secure and safe and protecting next to me. He was a sentinel, some mighty guardian to keep from harm those who could not do it themselves, a shield standing between me and the world even though I knew he had not meant for it.

"You see men attacking offensively, so you try to replicate it." I nodded. "Forget that. All of it. Your best weapon is distance. Get in close," he said, stepping into my space as thought to attack, and I stepped back. Thorin shook his head, grabbing my arm and pulling me back to him. "I said close. Close as you can. Keep their attention on your face as you move." Then I felt something sharp pressed just under my ribs. I flinched away and when I looked down he was holding a knife to my liver. "Like this."

After that we spend another quarter hour practicing. I learned how to stab people where it hurt, how to angle a blade to hit vitals. I knew the consequences of hitting a major organ and he taught me how to reach it.

"The lungs are a good place to aim. Drive the blade right under the ribs and thrust upward," he said, guiding my hand thought the motions using a tree as a target. "Thrust, and up. You will want to get their throat: don't. Keep your attacks low, outside of their eyesight. Lungs, spleen, kidneys, groin; all good targets, and they will buy you time to run."

"But what if I don't have a knife?" I asked.

"You have your legs for that, and your hands. The eyes, the abdomen, groin, knees; your objective is to immobilize. If they cannot get back up they cannot hurt you."

We went thought several different attacks, alternating between me trying them on trees and trying them on him.

"You will forget all of this," he said when we were done. I opened my mouth to speak, but he continued. "Practice every day until it becomes instinct. Once in the morning and once in the evening. Try not to break schedule if it can be helped, because when you are facing the tip of a blade you stop acting and start reacting. The sooner you condition yourself to get your opponents with the sharp end, the better."

I nodded without arguing. I may have known how to close people, but he knew how to open them, and so I trusted his judgement. Especially considering he was more than fifteen decades old.

When the lads came back, soaked to the bone and bouncing with life I set up quilts and furs by the fire, found an old book of tales I had purchased long ago when Edrig was but a babe, and curled up on my straw mattress couch, offering Thorin the space beside me. There was no place to be proper on the narrow space and I relished the warmth of him through our clothes. We spent the night reading, the lads cocooned in the sheets, warm and lazy and yawning, with drooping eyes and mussed hair. It was close to midnight when Thorin stood, making to waken the boys and take them home. I stopped him.

"Let them stay. They seem comfortable enough and it isn't safe tae walk in the woods at night, besides. Let them sleep." It was not the first time, after all.

So we did. The boys all slept in the furs under the hearth and Thorin and I sat at the kitchen table, sharing another drink between us, he ale and I, wine.

"I did mean it, ye ken," I said. He frowned. "About ye bein' like a box. Small and square and nondescript. Dae ye ken I was frightened when I saw ye first? Ye had enough metal on ye tae defend a Kingdom, ye did, and ye unloaded it all on my boot rack. First thin' I thought was if my iron frying pan was heavy enough tae break yer skull. But… Well. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, should I?" He looked confused and I chuckled, slightly drunken and slightly brave. So I gave him a small, almost shy smile and said, "Boxes have a common characteristic of being opened if ye have the patience tae find the right key. And what's inside can either be useless, or it can be beautiful, aye?"

"Is that meant to be a flirtation?"

I shook my head as I hung it. "I am too sober for it tae be a flirtation." I was unsure whether that statement was true or if I had lost my bravado and lied. "Besides, I hardly imagine I am very comely tae look at. Fíli said yer lasses are also square and stocky, and they have beards. Personally, I find the thought horrifyin', but I suppose beauty is in the eye o' the beholder, aye? And here I am: flat and narrow and hairless as a rat's tail."

I knew I wasn't a thing of beauty, with no curve to my figure and a lad's chest, and wrinkling at that.

"Nay," he agreed, "Not by the counting of my people. Neither can I be the most pleasant to look at to you."

I shook my head. "Ye have a comely face. Handsome, even, if I may so bold as tae say. The rest o' ye, though… Ye are absolutely terrifyin'," I admitted, "Even if I am a foot taller than ye." Then, loose tongued and heavy headed on wine, I blurted out, "Yer sister must be very beautiful. By yer countin', at least. The lads are handsome, and Kíli takes after ye in face so much that often I confuse him for ye from a distance. She looks like ye, doesn't she? If I hadn't kent better I'd say he was yer son, not yer sister's… Not that I have ever met the woman."

"Dam"

"Beg pardon, sir?" I asked, looking up at him from my cup of wine.

"The lasses of our people are Dams. Not women."

"Oh. Forgive me. I'd not kent. And what about…"

"Dwarrows."

"Oh. Thank ye for explaining. That would have been embarrassing. Well, I have never met the Dam, and… I should stop talkin', before I dae somethin' brilliantly humiliatin' again, like call yer entire race a box." I hid my face in my hands as it coloured red.

He raised his cup in toast. "To boxes."

"Tae boxes," I agreed with a small smile, and drank, still hiding my face behind my hand.

"Dís looks more like me than she did our parents, even with many a-year between us. Kíli takes after her in all but his eyes."

I peeked out form the shelter of my fingers to look at the Dwarf sitting across from me. He was looking beyond me to something only he could see.

"The boys never talk about their father," I said. I've heard about their mother once or twice in some of their more adventurous escapades, but this was the first implication of a father I got. Considering I didn't like to talk about my parents, either, I realized only too late I should not have asked about the Dwarf—Dwarrow.

"He was a schoolteacher. Straw hair, and a limp he got in his first battle. The lad loved to sing in the square, could entertain the crowds for hours if Dís ever let him. He was killed in a riot involving Dís and the boys," Thorin said, nay, almost whispered, and I nodded.

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Gíli." It sounded like a girl's name, but I nodded again anyway.

"How long ago?" I asked, and this time did mean it because I was genuinely curious and I needed, inexplicably, undeniably, absolutely had to know how long the Dam has been alone.

"Thirty four years," Thorin answered, and I did the math in my head; then, I went back to the original number.

"Thirty four years," I repeated, trying to wrap my head around it. "Two boys, thirty four years." By the Valar, the Dam was a bloody hero. I shook my head and dropped it onto then table. "I envy her."

"My sister is a great Dam, but there is little in her life to envy," he admitted.

"Nay. I envy that she had not gone mad and thrown herself from a cliff in the past three and a half decades. I cannot imagine the grief she had put up with in this time. Tae raise a child for fifteen years is one thin', but two for more than thirty… and alone, at that."

"She was not alone," he snapped, cutting me off before I could start my next thought. "Dís is not alone. She has the lads. She has Dwalin and myself. She has the rest of the mountain range supporting her."

"She could have had the world supportin' her and she would have been more alone than ye will ever ken," I whispered into my cup, then drank. Gíli died, Mégiil left—it made no difference. I wished I could have met Dís. Wished I could have asked her how? How did she do it for all of these years? How had her heart put up with that gaping emptiness in her heart, in her bed, at her kitchen table, in her coin purse. "I am a single mother, Thorin. I trust yer fightin' skills, ye trust my parentin' ones."

We were silent as we drank, then eventually he asked, "What happened to him?"

I took another deep swallow and said, "I was fourteen. Fancied myself in love, and he was kind tae me, patient, free with compliments. I knew we shouldn't, but I was just a girl and so I eventually stopped wantin' tae control myself and be a proper leddy. It was the warmest summer in my memory, and the longest. He promised me, he did; that he would ask my father's blessin', that we would be wedded in autumn. Fine and well in words, pretty promises of a houseful of children… Midsummer came, and we drank too much and forgot tae be proper, and a moon's turn later I came tae him and told him I was with child. He seemed tae me overjoyed, then vanished two days later. I've never seen him since. I don't even ken if he lives."

I threw my head back and drank deeply, and the wine was bitter on my tongue, or maybe it was my word and thoughts.

"Nothin' happened tae him, except he had the freedom tae leave when things became impossible, and I was trapped. That's the curse o' bein' a lass, ye ken. Ye lot, ye can walk away, if ye can't dae it. Ye have that right, that freedom. Ye don't have a babe attached tae yer front. So… I don't hate him. I never did." I threw my head back and drank. "I envied him." He was free to walk away from something he couldn't do, and I was stuck with it inside of me, saddled with the responsibility before I could understand the magnitude of it all.

I drank again, expecting everything that I had gotten from that tale before.

"Ye are a leddy," they would say. "Yer duty is tae yer husband. What can ye expect, leaping intae the bed o' any man with a comely face like a harlot. A lesson that was for ye." They were all right, of course, but I didn't need to be told by strangers all of my mistakes.

Thorin said nothing, and that was the third reason for which I respected him.

"I was betrothed once," he admitted into his cup, eyes trained elsewhere but me. "She was bonny, with honey hair and green eyes." There was sadness in his voice, and grief. "She couldn't sing, but when she played the flute everyone stopped to listen. Sometimes my sister and she played in taverns; for coin in the villages of Men, for the joy of it in our settlements. She wanted to study the night sky when she grew up, knew every constellation. And what a cook she was, to the envy of every lad for not having her and ever lass for not being her. Sweet, soft spoken, learned. Everything a lad can ask for in a wife, that lass had been."

"What happened tae her?"

Thorin sighed and drank. "She gave her life to her King, long before your father came into the world." I wasn't sure why I had done it but I reached across the table and covered his hand with one of mine, squeezing once but tightly, saying no false words of comfort, of which I knew they would give none.

"We are leaving one week from now," he informed me, sobering, and I nodded, chewing on my lip. The room got a little warmer. The candles got a little shorter. Why was he telling me? We weren't friends. We didn't owe anything to each other. Thorn and I were acquainted by way of our children and a common ground of spouting out long pent-up shite that nobody actually cared enough about to listen, and the only reason we said anything was because he was leaving and we would never see one another again. It was always easier talking to people you would never see again.

"I ken," I whispered, drank some more, looked at his face and tried to decide whether it was frightening or comely. He had wrinkles that were not from his age, and his eyes were dark. "Tell me a story," I asked. "Tell me about a place I've never been. Somewhere far from here, where it is always summer."

And so he did. He told me about three children; two black of hair and one with a crown of gold. He told me about a mountain that touched the heavens and rivers made of gold that ran through it like blood. About a city so great I could not walk all its streets if I had a fortnight. The only colour in it was happiness, the only feeling, home. He told me about a song that rang through the Kingdom's halls, of the Kings of old, of its creators, of those who came before and all those who would come after. He told me about the most skillful craftsmen in history and of the life they brought into the world, of how they took something raw and rough and nurtured it into something bright and precious and beautiful. He told me about a place called Erebor, and I thought perhaps if such a place existed, life would be a more joyous place. But, just like with my father, I could see it as he spoke.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

"I want tae show ye somethin'. If ye're interested," I said, my hands fisting in my overdress as I tried to keep them from shaking. The workday had finished and so I found Thorin leaving the forge with sweat and soot heavy on his skin, drenching the front and back of his work shirt.

"It's a little way from here: some quarter hour walkin', but it's very nice. I'd like for ye tae see it before ye leave here," I explained.

"And Fíli and Kíli?"

"They can come tae my home, if ye want. Edrig is home, they will take care o' one another." They'd been taking care of one another since they met. "Besides, no one sound o' mind would try tae break intae an old hag witch's home. The ground is cursed, it is, and anyone trespassin' will be eatin' insects for the rest o' their lives."

It was meant as a joke, but there was no humour in Thorin's face when I said it.

"What place is this?"

"It's a surprise. I think ye would like it. I mean, ye're a Dwarf and that, so I should think ye would enjoy visitin', if only tae critique the build and structural integrity. It's only a little way form Loch. In the woods."

He agreed. We came by the Black Rabbit to tell the boys to go to my home, to which they answered with an enthusiastic whoop and were out of the inn like a hoard of rabbits that heard a wolf. I shook my head, laughing.

"It is becoming dark," Thorin said. I nodded.

"That is part of the point," I promised, and we set out with a lantern, several torches and a basket of food I brought with me. We walked wordlessly to the boarders of Loch, and then deeper into the woods as night fell.

"Close tae two hundred year ago," I explained as we walked side by side, "The villagers had began a project tae defend against Orc raids. They dug long, windin' tunnels under the village, building a maze beneath their feet and only those with a map and a path knew the way out. It had several entrances around the village: in the Town Hall, in the glass gardens, in the butchery. But it has been so many years that most have forgotten about the tunnels, especially after the project was shut down due tae unstable ground. After several cave-ins people stopped usin' them. Now small children seeking adventure and criminals hide there."

We came to a hidden entrance, a small crevice in the rocks by a small waterfall in the stream that ran through the small patch of woods. The hole could only be seen under a certain angle. I climbed in feet first, shining the torch before me so as not to trip on the rocks, down into the tunnel and Thorin followed, landing much harder than I. The torchlight brightened the space and we started walking again. I looked down to him and saw how focussed he was, and laughed.

"Don't worry about memorizin' the way," I said, and dropped the torch low near the ground there a pale line was scratched into the stone just above the rocky floor. "I marked my way back close tae a decade ago."

The tunnel went one for several more paces, then turned left, and left again, and right, and finally the passage opened up to a wide cave. The only sound was that of water, and the only light was that of the torch I carried. Before us was cave tall enough for me to stand my full height and reach my hands up above my head. There was a little trickling waterfall that came down like curtains from a cleft in the rocks overhead, into a pool of steaming water, which in itself disappeared into another narrow tunnel. The cave was warm as a midsummer's day.

"What is this place?"

"This is where I come when I want tae be alone," I said as I stacked a small pile of stones up to wedge to torch into. Then I began unlacing my dress. He turned his back to me at once.

"What are you doing?"

"It's a hot sprin'. I want tae swim," I said. My dress came off, my underdressed, my stays and shift, my boots and stockings, my trousers. I jumped down into the warm water of the spring, and the spray coloured the dry stone dark. "Come and join me," I said, swimming across to the far side of the pool to sit on the taller rocks, still hidden modestly beneath the water. Thorin didn't move, his back remaining turned to me.

"Dae ye ken, the tunnels don't only stay under Loch. They go all the way tae Southwatch, and tae Blackpool and The Ford. T'would be useless if they only were here. The catacombs go for miles and days. Ye can get lost for the rest o' yer life here, not that yer life would be very long if ye did lose yer way."

He sat down, on the edge of the pool but facing away from me respectfully, and listened.

"One time, many generations ago, Loch was raided by a hundred Orcs and Wargs, the villagers say. They came like a storm and cut down everyone in their path. The Lord's wife took a map from his study and led all the women and children intae the tunnels with only five torches about her to light the way. But the Orcs and Wargs followed after them intae here, chased them down by smell, they did. They were so many that in their rampage they caused a collapse at the mouth of the tunnel, trapping themselves and the women and children within. The Orc hunted them in the darkness with only their noses to give them a clue.

"The Lord's wife heard the howlin' in the distance and ordered the group tae split intae six parts and each would walk in a different direction for one hundred paces, and then come back. They did it for miles, until the howling was only an echo as the Orcs and Wargs lost their way. When the beasts turned back the scents were mixed up so much that they could not tell what was recent and what was days old," I said. "Some say ye can still hear the dogs howlin' on a silent night. Listen. Dae ye hear the wolves huntin' for their prey?"

"It is only the wind," he said.

"Listen again. They wandered for days, and Wargs get hungry with nothin' tae hunt. How long, dae ye think, before they turned on their masters, or before the masters turned on their pets? On each other? And no one kens for certain how long they live."

We were silent for a moment, the only sound the water dripping into the pool and the wind moving through the tunnels.

"And the women?"

"They came to Southwatch and circled back to Loch, where they rebuilt it. The younger lads grew and married the lasses, and Loch rose form it's charred remains like the sun that comes up in the east."

He took off his rabbitskin vest, his doeskin shirt, a woollen undershirt, his sheepskin boots and trousers and jumped down into the water. I closed my eyes and wiped the water off my face once the pool settled. He kept his distance and averted his eyes but it was progress.

"Warm, is it not?" I said. I ducked under the water, unbound the braids wrapped around my head and combed it out with my fingers. When I came up for air it floated around me close to the surface of the pool like fire in the water.

"Dae ye ken, with Men it is said that red hair is lucky. Kissed by fire, they say. Kiss by fire and unhurt by its flame."

"I don't like fire," he grumbled low under his breath. I sat up and swam across the pool to sit beside him, knees folded up to my chest and my arms wrapped around them.

"I concluded as much, yes. But, the only way tae overcome a fear is to expose yerself tae it, and then learn tae associate it with somethin' good. Somethin' that makes ye happy."

He didn't say anything but at least he was looking at me. I took a deep breath.

"Yes, in case ye are wonderin': that was a flirtation." Poor though it may have been. It has rarely been something I ever had to use and I was out of practice.

"I am leaving in less than one week's time, lass."

"I ken," I said. "I'd not have the courage in me tae dae this if ye weren't. No expectations, no promises: nothin' but here and now, if ye want it."

He turned away from me, staring ahead of him and he wasn't here in the cave with me anymore. Not in mind.

"I will not break any promises I give to you, nor would I leave you with child to fend for yourself."

"So promise me nothin'," I pled. "Say nothin' and I will say nothin' in return. I ken how tae be careful now: I won't become with child."

"I can give you nothing in this," he said, still not looking at me. I got up and swam around to float in front of him.

"Nor can I give ye anythin'. Stop looking for excuses, and find a reason. The only reason that matters," I said. "We were kind tae one another, in a life where kindness was a generous luxury we could not easily afford. Leave yer life outside. Stay with me here tonight, and be gone in a week's time."

He finally looked at me, and his eyes were sad as mine darted between them hopefully, waiting for him to say something—anything—if only he not remain silent.

"My options are more complicated than yours, lass."

I pursed my lips, closing my eyes. My face was heating up, and not from the steam coming up from the pool. I looked away, feeling absolutely humiliated, and swam away from him, climbing out of the pool and pulling my shift over my head. The fabric stuck to me uncomfortably – I tried to straighten it but it refused to cooperate. I put on my dress and picked the rest of my clothes up with my hands, lighting another torch for him to find his way back and headed for the exit.

"Forgive me, sir. I should not have been so bold and presumptuous. It was very unbecoming of me," I muttered under my breath, trying not to cry.

I have fallen with child out of wedlock, the father left me, I was accused of adultery in front of my entire home village, disowned and banished, had to raise my son alone and endure the verbal and physical loose behaviour of drunken Men trying to get under my skirts when I worked in the tavern to feed us both. I seduced a lawyer to help me purchase a square of land, signed a document claiming we were wed so that the purchase may be possible in his name, and then spent a moon building a house with nothing but my hands to guide me. I was shunned, insulted, accused of witchcraft by a grieving woman whose child came into the world dead when I had helped her deliver the boy, titled a caretaker after fifteen years of hard work in the hopes to one day be good enough to be called a healer.

Yet with that, I have never felt more humiliated in my life.

"Red hair is rare among my people," Thorin said behind me. "Most are of brown and black. It is considered lucky, also."

"A lovely accomplishment, I'm sure," I said, hugging my dresses and trousers closer to my chest, trying, trying, trying not to cry. I was so stupid. Of course he'd not want me. What could I offer him, after all? And I was a Woman, at that, and he had told me yestereve that he had lost his betrothed.

A hand on my arm stopped me. I jumped, turning around to look at what grabbed me to find Thorin holding a wet strand of my hair between his fingers, inspecting it while he held me still. I let a part of my hair fall over my face, hiding it as it grew red again.

"My people use braids to tell stories that we carry with us. Of our accomplishments, of our status. Spouses, parents, masteries of crafts and arts. You would wear a mother's braids had you been born a Dam, and those of a healer. A giver of life."

I bit my lip. Hope was foolish, but my heart fostered it still.

"What o' yer own? What dae they say?"

"Of the battles I have fought, of my lineage, of my trade."

"Smithing," I said without really meaning to.

"Aye. That, too."

"And… dae braids tell o' yer friends?"

Thorin shook his head. "No, lass. Those we do not wear in out hair." My lips twitched into a momentary smile. I took a deep breath.

"And the people ye care about? How dae ye tell about them?"

I have never kissed anyone who was shorter than I. Mégiil was a head taller, and the lawyer that had persuaded to help me purchase the land upon which I built my home was also more than my height. Kissing someone shorter was like sitting in a lover's lap. I had to hunch my shoulders and bend my back, and because of this there was a wide gap between us. My neck cramped very quickly and my spine began to burn. His lips were rough, chapped, and his beard scratched my face.

I made a noise of protest and he let me straighten. I looked down, hiding my face behind the curtain of my hair.

"I am sorry. Leaning down is very uncomfortable. I rather find myself sympathetic tae tall people."

"Craning my neck and standing on my toes is hardly appealing, no," he agreed. I let out a breathy laugh and then got on my knees instead. With both of us kneeling the height different was less prominent, even if I still had to turn my head down to look him the in the eye.

He kissed me again, and I wondered how it must be for him, with my rough, chapped lips and my servant's hands and my dry skin… smooth face. Dams had hair on their faces, unlike the lasses of all other races that I knew of. Was that repelling to him, that my face was as smooth as a babe's? Did it make him uncomfortable to be kissing what much have felt to him to be a child? But he didn't pull away, made no indication of wanting to stop. Thorin smelled like fire and metal and coal.

He pressed forward and I let him, leaning back on one of my hands while I held onto his shoulder, afraid he would drop me despite that I have seen him in the forge, knew the strength he was capable of. It had been so many years since I have let myself enjoy the company of another, since I have felt another heart beating on top of mine, felt someone's warmth against me, around me, in me. I drew back, taking a breath.

"Wait… Wait, stop, wait…"

He was two paces away from me within a moment, leaving me to fall on the floor from the sudden loss of his arms holding me up. I dropped with a huff and pushed myself up onto my elbows, shook my head.

"Nay, that is not… I had not meant… It is… Heavens, this is embarrassin'," I moaned, sitting up to hide my face in my knees. "I have… It has been long, is all. Close tae a decade. Things have… I've quite forgotten some things. Can we… Can we slow down a little? Until I remember what I'm supposed tae dae with my hands, much less everythin' else?" I tried to explain.

"You should have said it sooner," he told me, kneeling down in front of me. "Come here, lass," Thorin said, pulling me up. I folded my legs under me and looked up at him, for once the Dwarf taller than I. "Do I frighten you?"

I opened my mouth to answer, than realized what I wanted to say was a lie. I closed my mouth and my eyes moved to the pale, rough scars and black ink painted over his skin.

"Not ye," I said. "Just… these. These frighten me. What they mean—about ye, about others. I look at ye and I can't not think about where they came from. About… when they came from."

He huffed in what might have been amusement or equally likely anger.

"I am more than five times your age, lass, and still you choose this. I have not shown you the kindness you boasted." He shook his head.

"Oh, nay: ye are many things, and kind is not one o' them. The first thin' ye said tae me was an insult, in my own home while yer nephew lay dyin' on my kitchen table, the only help a quarter hour's walk away," I admitted. "Ye never berated me. Never belittled me skill, or criticized my life choices or tried tae teach me how tae live. Ye never questioned my work or hit me when I barked an order at ye or told me I have been livin' without a man for so long that I have forgotten I was a woman. Ye told me stories; about places I'd never see, about people I'd never meet, about things I'd never dae. And in those stories I could pretend that I did, just like I did with my father, a gift I've not held in my hand for such a long time. Ye gave me the chance tae cook up a large meal and in that reminded me how good it felt tae be praised for it, tae be thanked, tae see myself makin' somethin' that made other people happy. It gave me closure," I said, tracing a small scar on the left side of his ribs, "kennin' there are decent people yet in this world. Kennin' I could still have that familial warmth in my home and in my life."

Then, feeling bold, I leaned over and pressing my mouth over it.

"Tell me a story," I muttered against his skin, placing my hands on his chest and pushing ever so slightly. He let me, and soon we lay side by side, I on my back and he hovering half over me, supporting himself on his hands. I traced his scars, the prominent and the small, faded ones and new, and he told me how he got each of them. A great many belonged to great battles fought before I came into this world, others to skirmishes with friends in his childhood. Accidents at the forge, fights with his sister, sparring with his comrades, defending his home from attackers, the road. The most resent one, on his arm, from the ambush that nearly took his nephew's life.

"What happened here?" I asked, ghosting my fingers under his left eye, where there was a thin line barely missing his socket. He turned his face into my palm and his eyes were closed.

"When Gíli came to me, requesting my blessing for Dís' hand in marriage, I had challenged him to a duel. Dís was not pleased with this arrangement."

"Again?" I laughed. "I could swear ye got more injuries from her than ye did from Orcs and mercenaries."

"My sister is a fierce fighter. She protects those she loves; our blood relation does not save me from her wrath."

I laughed. "Aye. I can see that," I said, then leaned up to kiss the scar under his eye. Then his brow. Then his nose. Then his mouth. He pulled me up until I was straddling his lap, hunching over him as we kissed. I wondered why I was back to being taller than him, when we had laid down to cancel the difference, but when I felt his hands, wide and callus and warm, on my back I wondered no more. He slipped my shift from my shoulders, letting it pool at my hips and I had to resist the urge to cross my arms over my chest, insignificant though it was. He had more hair on him than anyone I have ever seen, and it tickled my chest, drawing a giggle form me.

Closing my eyes against the embarrassment at was sure to come if I allowed him to look at me any longer, mapping out my skin with his eyes, I pressed forward to capture his lips, rough and hard, opened my mouth to him, lost my breath to how right it felt to fit together like this.

Then I was on my back, his weight pressing me into the rocky floor, and something was digging into my back, something uneven and uncomfortable. We never stopped kissing, learning each other's mouths, discovering the many ways we could make each other react. I followed his lead, letting my hands roam where his did on my body—his arms, his back, his chest, his neck. If Dwarves were truly made of stone, he was proof of it: it was mesmerizing to behold, the sheer amount of strength trapped under the hard, thick skin. Such a powerful being, all force and brutal strength and metal and earth and fire, just barely restrained by the knowledge that he could break me if he wasn't careful. It wasn't an attractive thought and for a moment I was scared that he might forget to take care, to control his strength, that he would lose himself.

When I felt his erection press into my belly, far too high, I had my excuse to lean up, pushing him back, and then turn us over to straddle his hips, pushing his back onto the ground.

"It would be rather uncomfortable," I explained, "if yer face was in my chest when we were together, nay?"

"Aye. Have you ever been…"

"One time," I said, cutting him off. I didn't like it much. Intimacy was made to be felt chest to chest, heart to beating heart. This way there was so much space between lovers, too much space. It felt separated, even in the most close and intimate moment.

I leaned over and kissed him again, more forcefully now, more demanding. His want was evident against the inside of my thighs and my cheeks coloured red again even as an overwhelmingly humbling tide washed over my heart. That was for me. I did that.

"Look at me," I whispered my lips brushing against his, breathing the same air. He opened his eyes. "Look," I said again, my matted wet hair cascading down around us like liquid flame. "Fire," I breathed, feeling his own against my lips, warm and reassuring. "Does it frighten ye?"

He pulled me down and we were together again, lips pressed against lips, skin against skin. I stopped trying to hold myself up, letting him support my weight as I covered every part of his skin with mine that I could. We were changelings, shape-shifters, opening each other up, wrapping ourselves in the skin of other one. I wanted to crawl under his skin and make my home there, tight fit and warm and wanting, wanted, two things becoming one thing, two people separated by nothing, songs whispered over lips without breath.

"Lass." Again with the 'lass'. Lass was all he ever called me. I wanted to hear my name, my real name, spill from his lips, wanted to teach it to him until my name was the only thing he knew to speak, until he cried it as I brought him to the hight of his pleasure. "You cannot take this back."

"I don't want tae take it back," I said.

You almost died here, I thought, tracing one of his battle scars, and you almost died here, and you almost died here, and here and here and more on your back, and you can die tomorrow, we can all die tomorrow because no one was safe from death so why did we wait for something to happen if we could make it happen by our own, because the only certainty was here and now, and when the present became the past I did not want to have so many regrets in mine.

So I captured his mouth with mine again and opened it to him, and tasted the steel and blood and fire and fury on it, the anger and the loathing and the brokenness, and his skin was a map of the world and map of his life, so I pressed myself into it and left a mark where I have been, to remind him when he was gone of the lass that had held him and wanted him and hoping against hope that, walking along the edge of his life, I had left footprints that would not wash away with the high tide.

He drew a path in my own skin with his hands for all the world to know that he was here, and we were here, and they couldn't take it away from us, on my ribs, down the contours of my back, my lips, and his hands were bright red steel on me as he sat up sharply, pulling me into his lap, my knees on either side of his hips and my hands around his neck, in his hair, trailing down the wide plains of his chest, drawing sounds from me I had forgotten I could make and wanting, wanting, wanting, for something that was not mine to have, which made the forbidden act all the sweeter.

I pressed my forehead against his, breathing his air, feeling every one of his exhales on my lips, and he stilled, questioning, awaiting my permission, letting me make the first move, letting me understand what I wanted before he took and he gave and we had, before something happened that couldn't be undone, before we knew each other's bodies in the closest way one person can know another and in that brilliant realization I ducked my head to kiss him again with need and want and something I couldn't name yet, primal and instinct and give as we fumbled with his belt, running my fingers through his hair and along the side of his face.

I cried out when he slid into me, closing my eyes and breathing deep as my body tried to relearn what it was like to be made one with someone else, and then, "Ngh… no… no..." as he tried to pull away, afraid he had hurt me even as I never thought him the type to be gentle in bed, wrapping my legs around his waist, sitting frozen in his lap and trying to recall how to move, how to breathe, how to think anything other than that something was missing from me and now it was not, like a period at the end of a sentence that was incomplete until now, and this was solid and final and happening and mine.

I kissed him, almost shy, almost uncertain because maybe in part I was despite knowing I wanted this, with him, and then again with more confidence, fingers tracing the length of his neck, the shape of his jaw, feeling the texture of his hair, tasting salt on my tongue, and it took that to realize I was crying, though from what I was not sure, because I was close to him now, so close to him, with nothing left between us but our skin and, "Please," I choked, pled, before I could think to run away, to hide from this feeling of needing something I couldn't put a name to, something I knew I couldn't keep.

He moved first, because I could not remember how to, and I breathed, finally breathed, sharp and deep and do that again, as I tried to make myself rock against him, seeking the pleasure I knew was hidden inside of me because my own hands have given it to me on nights when I grew lonely and hungry, and company and food could not sate it, trying to make myself give him the pleasure I knew I could because I have done it enough times in the bloom of my youth, trying to make this good for him.

He thrust once, twice, and on the third I finally recalled what to do, how to do it, when, and tried to match his rhythm, rolled my hips in a way I knew made men gasp or groan, raising and then pressing back down as he and I stopped being he and I and started being us and we and this and now and please and more, until I dropped my head on his shoulder, the skin in the crook of his neck salty on my tongue as I left an imprint of my teeth there, because I could not keep my head upright any longer, could hardly keep myself upright.

We lived on each other and in each other and around each other, one flesh, one mind, one purpose, and I couldn't hear the water or the wind in the tunnels or my heart in my ears or the gasps that I made every time we moved closer together and farther apart and then closer together still, becoming one thing and separating and becoming one thing again more so than we were before and there was only skin and heat and hands and lips and I want you, and everyone should have a place in the world and mine was inside of him as he left impressions of his hands on my skin and I left scratches down his back, his arms, reminders to last a lifetime even after they faded and disappeared.

What part of my mind functioned still, small and insignificant and maybe it was not my mind at all but instinct and reaction after being hurt once in a way that I could not take back, told me that I should move and so I did, letting him slid out of me and finish between us, white and hot and sticky and I did that to him, I made him like that, made him gasp my name as he reached the height of his pleasure and lay slack in my arms, his head on my chest, his ear over my racing heart as I tried to catch my breath, tried to concentrate on something more than the tight, aching need between my thighs.

Much later, we lay side by side on my cloak. He marked my uneven tan with his mouth, tracing the colourlessness of where my gown covered me, drawing patterns with his fingers, like a holy prefer, like something consecrated to the gods. For years or for hours, we didn't need to speak, out heartbeats as slow and lazy as our breathing, my back pressed to him as he brushed my hair from my neck and kissed me there, lingering when he heard the lazy noises of encouragement I made, half-eaten food forgotten in the basket. We had slept, or not, I had lost track.

He traced his fingers, rough with hard work, down my back, ghosting over the marks on my skin.

"What happened?" He asked, and I stiffened in his arms, drew myself up and tried to shrink at the remembrance of what he felt under his hands. "Lass, who did this to you?"

I closed my eyes, refusing to let them water at the memory of it, the pain that followed after the fact, the pain that came before, the pain that still ceased my heart like a frozen river as the ice cracked and broke and swallowed me into its stabbing blackness.

"My scares are hardly as impressive as yers," I whispered. "Any Man would ken." I tried not to sound angry, and I wasn't sure who I was angry at more: Thorin or myself. "I was a girl, and told like the rest of us tae be chaste, tae be patient, above such wild and unthinking acts. I was taught tae be better than such carelessness, wiser, gentler. I disobeyed me father, my mother, my people, my culture, I disobeyed the laws o' gods and Men, and this is the punishment for disobedience."

His fingers traced the whip marks, seven lashes. I was presented in the Town Hall and the Lord heard what my family had to say before he carried out the sentence. The punishment fit the crime, but when it was over and my back was bloodied I couldn't run to my mother's arms and weep, had no right to do it as I no longer bore the name of my family and she was my mother no more.

"Your man should not have left you to this. He was a coward to flee, and a traitor."

"I belong tae no man," I said, my voice thick with a sudden wave of grief that I had not let myself feel in years. "That much was made quite clear tae me when I was fifteen. I belong not tae a father, nor a brother, nor a husband, abandoned tae fend for myself when I needed the people I loved the most beside me. My father... My lover... My brothers. I belon' tae no one. I have no one. If ye were a lass ye would understand."

My tears ran down the side of my face and vanished into my hair, so I sniffed, cleared my throat and changed the subject before I could do something stupid, like start sobbing and wallowing in self pity for something I deserved, anyway.

"Please don't fall asleep. Not yet," I said to him. "Ye snore most horribly. It'd be a shame tae ruin this wonderful night with that orchestra."

"Orchestra?" he asked, and I was glad he understood at least this much and played into it.

"On the first night, when ye slept in my home, I could not fall asleep because o' ye three in the other room. It was like a thunderstorm outside o' my door. Ye have severe breathin' problems, ye dae."

"My breathing patterns offend you," he concluded with far too much seriousness for such a string of words, and I chuckled through the remainder of my tears.

"Only when they are keeping me awake five out o' the seven hours o' the night," I said. He changed the subject again, before I could laugh at him over something.

"You seem very knowledgeable for one who has not had company for many years." I wasn't sure if it was a compliment, an insult, or an inquiry.

"I suppose it's much like skating on the ice; the knowledge fades, it never truly goes away. Ye… haven't been with anyone for long, either," I said. "Have ye?"

"Nay. It has been many more years for me than it has been for you, lass."

"How long?" I asked, curiosity peaked.

"More than the years you have lived," he told me, and curiosity turned into pity. Sex outside of wedlock was a bad thing for many reasons, but I knew how it can feel oh so good in ways unlike anything else in the world. There is a sense of completion when you are with someone, a sense of rightness, and you find yourself asking how could something like this, such closeness and trust and intimacy and open honesty, laying your heart out for sacrifice, be wrong? To have gone more than thirty years with nought but his hand to entertain him… I felt sorry for him very much.

"Than I suppose it would only be fair at I left ye somethin' tae remember me by, aye?" I said as I turned around, kissing him on the lips, down his neck, taking my time exploring his chest with my mouth as my hands moved lower, and then my lips. It has been longer still since I had pleasured anyone with my mouth, but I could recall the fundamentals.

When I licked up the length and then took the tip in my mouth his breath caught, and quickened. I pulled away, biting my lip, and looked up, finding his eyes trained on me, watching my every move, the blue of them glazed over with lust. I tried to take him all in my mouth and he, being shorter then the other two I have been with, fit without choking me too badly. His fingers working into my hair, fisting in the strands as his laboured breath shuddered and turned into quiet groans. I gaged when he thrust up, pulling away and pushing his hips down, not that my meek strength did much good. He took the cue, though, forcing himself to steady the rocking of his hips. When he spilled in my mouth I tried to ignore the bitter taste in favour of focussing on the weak breath and the shaking of his frame, the sweat coating his skin in the throughs of passion, in what I had done for him, to him, with him.

"It has never been my favourite part," I said later, laying with my head on his chest. We didn't need our scattered garments covering us, the cave crisp and the air thick as we moved closer to the spring. Thorin and I had only just woken up, having indeed fallen asleep despite not intending so.

"Lass, you owe me nothing…"

"It is not particularly delectable, nay," I stopped him before he could come to the wrong conclusion, "but… I don't like the taste, not the act." He looked down at me with a deep furrow in his brow. "I like the control," I explained. "I like that I can make ye feel what I want, when I want it. Ye are entirely mine tae dae with as I please, naked and exposed and vulnerable and moaning my name. I like that."

When I said that he rolled on top of me and found every place where I was ticklish with his mouth, drawing giggles from my lips and capturing them with his own and his hands travelled down to where my hair was just as bright red, asking if that doubled the luck before pleasuring me with his hands, watching my face as he found the place within me that made me arch and cry out and dig my nails into his arms and beg for more, plead with him when he brought me so close and then pulled away, bringing me back down and starting over, until I finished as well, unable to think of anything but how good his fingers felt inside of me and how good the rest of him would feel inside of me, and "… Mmm, not… Ngh, not fair hnn…" I moaned.

When I was finished we ate a little more, but our appetite quickly changed into something that could not be satisfied with bread and smoked fish and ale. I led him into the pool and we simply sat and kissed for hours or days, languid and sleepy, hands in hair, on faces, chests, shoulders. I wanted to stay here forever. I floated on my back in the middle of the pool and he watched me, his thoughts elsewhere but his eyes boring under my skin, into the centre of me, seeing everything bare and plain and under his gaze I felt like a lamb for sacrifice, and found it only excited me, making me clench my thighs to relieve some of the aching heat building there again.

The fourth torch has began burning out, it's death telling us the early hour of the morning, but when I made to climb out of the pool he pulled my back down and I discovered there was energy in him yet for us to enjoy one another one more time.

We dressed and I watched him openly and unashamed, committing to memory every slope of his back and his chest and his legs, the thick pelt of hair covering them, the ink and scars lining his form. Dwarves were nothing like midgets, I suddenly realized. They were not stunted or deformed, with too-large heads and short appendages and protruding brows and noses. Yes, his nose was an impressive size, but he was just a smaller Man, his only defining trait being the unreal amount of muscle rippling under the surface of him with every one of his moves.

We returned to my home with the paling of the sky, and I found despite not having slept overmuch I was well rested. I felt guilty for keeping Thorin awake all night, he having to go to the forge in only a few hours, so I made food for everybody and my kitchen table was lively and cheerful and full of blushing and non-too-subtle sniggering for the children as we broke our fast.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

Over the final days of their stay, Edrig was hardly home, and not because he was running his chores. I often found my son with Fíli and Kíli, helping them sell their arts and crafts, walking in the market with a grocery list, slipping into the library in the evenings after the work day was done.

I visited Thorin at the forge for a quarter hour as I did always, sitting and reading my journals as he hammered away at red metal that would become a fine blade or fixed horseshoes or mended kitchenware. Sometimes we ate together, but he was too busy in most days to break from the fire. On his last night he called me up to his rooms at the inn. I followed him up the stairs and when he pushed the door open I found the room empty. I bit my lip, trying not to read too much into it, but then he stood expectingly by the bed and I left my things at the door to join him in it.

I didn't want to; I wanted to remember him—us—as we were in the cave, when we were not ourselves, when the weight of our responsibilities and our transgressions could not touch us. This time was different. This time was shame and guilt and it made me sick with humiliation. I would drown it in wine later, and fall asleep choking on it, but now was not the time to dwell on error, only relief and goodness.

Later, when we were finished he undid my braids, wrapped around my head several times to distribute the weight evenly, and combed it out, and would ask, "Why do you subject yourself to me, an old, broken Dwarrow with nothing to give?" and I would tell him,

"They will say ye have stolen my honour, but I have given it freely and for that I am stronger than any o' them. My mistakes are my own, as are my accomplishments. It has been long since I have allowed for somethin' tae be taken from me. This is mine tae give, and I give it gladly, as you have given yerself. Would that I could declare my freedom tae the world, only it would brin' nought but scorn upon my head. Let this be our private victory, our claim tae our own lives, that we may live them untouched by the laws of mortal men."

He hummed then but said nothing, and in my heart I knew he agreed, if only for tonight.

"What are ye doin'?" I asked, my eyes closed as his fingers ran tough my hair, making soft, pleased noises at the feeling.

"Braids tell stories," he said. "They are the legends of our lives. Yours tell that you are a mother and a healer. A giver of life." I remembered the words from our night in the caves, and couldn't help but smile. "Any Dwarf who cares to look will know you can be trusted."

"Are ye invitin' yer people intae my home as they please?" I questioned, ginning, even as I sat at the foot of his bed with only a sheet to cover me, and the room was much colder than the cave. "Any more o' ye and I'll be needin' a bigger house, I will."

I felt my hair when he was done, a part of it braided up on my head and a part coming down with the rest of my locks. I pulled the braids over my shoulder to inspect them, committing their pattern to memory for when he was gone.

"Thank ye."

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

When came to fall the summer that kindled the heart of Loch for many years to come, it was felt throughout the town. The passion of the townspeople wained with the autumn freezing but like snow flowers it prevailed through the cold. It was near a decade afore Loch saw another Dwarf, but him it welcomed with mead and meat and an endless supply of work offers. I was older then, and wiser, and my surprise was lacking when I discovered that my Thorin was a Blue-blood. That one was the first of more and more. As time stole the orange from my hair Loch had hosted no less than two dozen Dwarrows, each of them with a gift to share with the world. I remember them all; how they came about, how they left us, what my people learned and what they taught in return. Still through the years, enduring the test of time and my slipping memory was the summer of Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli. Them I remember the brightest.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

In the morn Edrig and I woke early to accompany them away. The Dwarves had packed and dressed for the journey in the traveling clothes I had mended in my spare time. Fíli and Kíli dragged my son by the hand to show him something, crouching in the dirt and snickering and poking the ground with a stick. I decided I would rather not know, after last time, when they brought me a bucket of mushrooms, only for me to dig out a cup's worth of earth worms. I of course made them clean up the mess I made after I screamed and threw the worms into the air, but they laughed while they worked all the same.

I watched them and smiled, then smiled again when they hugged out their farewells, my embroidery proud on the bottom left corners of their clocks. All three had a matching set in grey thread, not the best in Loch, but it did well and the needle art was beautiful, the symbols provided by Kíli. They meant a lot more to the Dwarves then to me, I knew, but they could not tell me the reason. The lads were near in tears when I presented them with the embroidered clocks they had left in my care to mend over the summer. They offered me any of the jewellery they had crafted in thanks, but I could not take it for fear of it being stolen. They had looked at one another, nodded, and then a few short days later I had found all of my pots and pans mended and polished to a shine I did not know they had. Food did not stick to them any longer.

Edrig had chosen good friends for himself.

"If you ever come south to the Blue Mountains, ask any Dwarf to point you in the direction of any of us," Fíli said.

"Yes. By then every Dwarf there will know you by name and face," Kíli added just as enthusiastically. I shook my head.

"I hardly think so."

"You clearly underestimate Dwarves, then," Fíli told me.

"You saved my life, and Fíli's and our Uncle's. There won't be a Dwarf alive who won't know the story in a moon's turn."

"I don't believe I am the first Woman to have ever helped a Dwarf in need," I said, crossing my arms. Kíli shook his head.

"Yes, but not just any Dwarf. You saved us and our Uncle and…" He trailed off when he caught a stern look from Thorin and cleared his throat. "Just, try to visit us? You need only tell them your name and they will take you. Ma might even share some of her recipes with you after she's finished smothering you with gratitude," he said, grinning mad from ear to ear.

Edrig assured them in my place that we will most definitely visit, far too caught up in the moment to realize it was only curtesy and nothing more. The Dwarves didn't need women and their children running around their home.

They hugged me, tight enough to lift my heels off the ground, taking turns, and then went through a far more complicated parting ritual with Edrig, compete with code words and secret handshakes. I turned to Thorin.

"Good luck," I bid him. He nodded, not needing words to wish me the same. I made him promise he would find some happiness in his life after he left, would find reason more to smile and laugh without being so afraid that the joy would be taken away.

"I cannot give you this vow."

"Give it anyway. Promise me, Thorin."

"I will give this word to you if in exchange you give me yours that you will be more cautious with strangers."

"I can only promise the candle in my window will glow brightly for your people, and I will be wiser about the company I keep and to whom I give my trust."

They walked away. From us, from Loch, from an early spring and warm summer, and as the autumn winds blew through my hair, half unbound, it truly did look like candlelight, bright red around my blue dress, and the autumn snow began to fall around us. I shivered, wrapping my shawl tighter around me.

"When I grow up I'm goin' tae travel all over the world," Edrig said. "I'm going tae be a hero, just like Fíli and Kíli and Thorin."

I breathed deep. I knew what I was getting into when I took him to the cave and made love for a night. I knew he would leave. Thorin was not my first love and he would not be my last. The dry pain in my throat was from the cold I had caught.

My face was wet, but surely it was only the snow, as it melted on my cheeks.


	4. The Long Goodbye

**_Strangers When We Meet:_**

 _ **Author:** Nicky._

 _ **Rating:** Mature for sexual content in part three._

 _ **Disclaimer:** The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to Mr. Tolkien, and in part I suppose to Mr. Jackson as well. This is a non-profit work for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here. Credits go where credits are due :))_

 _ **Pairings:** Thorin/OFC (Original Female Character), minor Bagginshield at the end, because I'm a shipper and I couldn't not, Fíli &Kíli&OMC friendship and teenage shenanigans._

 _ **Summary:** Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget._

 _ **Chapter Notes:** This is the last chapter, and I'm really happy with it and proud of it, and myself, and my beta, and all of you for having made and published it. It's quite the milestone for me for a lot of reasons, one of which being that I've never actually completed a piece of fanfiction before now. I hope you love it :))_

 _ **Special Thanks:** I'd like to profoundly thank onoheiwa for your brilliant insight and support and help. This would not have turned out without you! onoheiwa took the time to help make my work better and just, thank you, so much! Your help was amazing :)) Further thanks to every single person who read and followed and faved and left a review. You are amazing, and I love you!_

 _ **Story:** …_

* * *

 _4 / The Long Goodbye_

 _"We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it."_

 _― Richard Siken, Crush_

* * *

Fate was a fickle thing. Thorin had learned this many decades ago. It had taken Dís down the path that inevitably introduced her to Gíli, had led to the meeting between his father and Tharkûn, had directed the road back to the homeland they had lost close to eighteen decades past. It was fate also that had played a joke upon the King, and what a joke it was, for all the land to laugh at life's great jest.

Nine years after laying eyes upon his home for the first time in one hundred and seventy one years, Thorin had laid eyes upon it for the last time.

He would return west, to Ered Luin and to his sister, whom refused to stay in Erebor once it had been reclaimed, too fresh were the ghosts of their parents and grandparents, childhood friends, their brother. She had come, twice, with caravans from the west, and twice she returned to the place where she had grown up and where Fíli and Kíli grew up (Fíli, who would never walk again and Kíli, who would always need to turn his head to see and hear rightward).

Thorin would rejoin Dís in the Blue Mountains and rule their people together from there, with Fíli and Kíli on the throne in Erebor—Fíli and Kíli, because it had always been Fíli and Kíli, never Fíli or Kíli. Five years after the Battle of the Five Armies (the Battle of Erebor, as it was more commonly and less officially known, as the number of armies involved was ill agreed upon) he had renounced the crown to his nephews, and spent the next four advising them. It was one morn in winter that Kíli approached him and told him they would be well without him. They had Balin, and Dwalin, and the rest of their council and the Company. Thorin left after a season, taken the path they had travelled together a time so long ago, it felt. His people deserved a King uncorrupted by the brutalities of life as he was. How could he put Erebor back together if he couldn't do it for himself? Thorin would look after the settlement in Ered Luin and if chance allowed for it, take up smithing once more, travel, share his crafts with the world.

Perhaps on his way west he would take a brief detour, visit the green land that he had come to know as a form of save haven, if a little off putting by the sheer amount of unreal safety that simply had no place in this world… See their burglar.

Fate indeed had a way with its jests, that Thorin had set out east to reclaim his home, only to have discovered it on the road there.

Thorin looked north when he came upon the northernmost boarder of the Shire. He had looked north often enough in the years, yet this time was different. He had wondered, on long nights, when the wind grew icy and his feet grew restless, what would his life been like if he had returned sooner to spend the rest of the lass's by her side. He wondered what their lives would have been if he had remained, if they had not been stubborn and broken, if they had allowed their hearts to be selfish. Would they have made one another happy? Brought up a home? Raised a family? Only, they had enough mending to do with their own selves before they could mend one another. They would have spent their years in shared misery, and that was no way to live, forcing one another to suffer each other's pain.

He oft wondered if she had been more fortunate than he in mending herself.

Thus Thorin did not turn south to the Shire. Instead he traveled farther north, for close to a moon's turn, and eventually the scenery became familiar. Thorin travelled until he came upon a lone house in a clearing near a narrow stream where children were playing. Two lads and an older lass, screaming and squealing, chasing after one another with mud in their hands, in hardly more than their underclothes. When they saw him they stopped, blinked several times, and then pointed to the house.

"Ma! I think there's someone here for ye again! One o' the small fellows with the big swords!" one of the lads, a head shorter than Thorin, called out. He turned to where the boy was speaking to as a woman with a babe on her right hip and a large basket of dry laundry on her left came out from around the back corner of the house. She had black hair braided up in a crown around her head in a way that was vaguely familiar.

"May I help ye, gentledwarf?" the lass asked, propping her son up higher, and he wondered if Dwarves frequented this region that the lass should seem so at ease with an armed stranger near four of her children. Either that or she was simple of mind.

"I am looking for the lady Asíra. Last I have been informed she lived here?"

"That would be my goodmother. She lives in Loch now. If ye like I can tell her ye were…"

"No, lass. Think nothing of it. Apologies for disturbing your peace," he said, giving a curt nod and turning his back on the house that was indeed significantly larger. At least three rooms larger. He turned and walked back the way he came.

Thorin rented an overnight room in the Black Rabbit and left in the early morning. The streets were already busy with life, as they were when he was younger, the markets open and the shops, the people walking past without looking twice—a contrast to his first stay, when they stopped and openly gawked as he walked by. Perhaps with the increased traffic between the west and east Loch has seen enough of his people to have grown accustomed to having them.

Perhaps it was another jest of fate that as he turned a corner around a bakery he walked into an elderly woman, causing her to drop her basket of linens. They knelt to pick them up before they were sullied.

"Apologies, madam."

"Nay, ye forgive me, sir. I had not been lookin' where I went."

Safe, his mind supplied when he looked up at her, straightening to his feet. It took him a moment to process why he thought so, and then suddenly breathing became a little difficult. He looked at the woman; she had white hair and wrinkles and squinted to see, older than Balin in face and hunched over at the shoulders. Her hands shook, an illness that was common among the elderly. It had only been a few short decades; a little more than four. How had time changed her so, that she would be so unrecognizable? So ancient?

She was a mother and a healer. A giver of life. It was in her hair, braided back in the way of his people. It was hard to believe she wore them still; he had not expected the lass to continue the tale he told in her hair once he left.

They nodded to one another and parted ways, he continuing on his road and she on hers. He made three paces before turning his head. The lass stood inside the bakery, by an old man equally grey and wrinkled as she, who leaned down to kiss her cheek. He said something, and the lass smacked the back of her hand on his chest, but the man only laughed. A small child, a head shorter than Thorin, ran out from inside the bakery, his face covered in blotches of flour.

"Grandma! Look, look! I helped grandpa bake cake!"

"Oh, aye! I can see that! I can see that all over yer face and in yer hair," the lass said, laughing as she brushed flour from the boy's nose. He opened his mouth to call to her, for what he did not know, then closed it again. She found her happiness in life. He would not interrupt it for his own selfish gain. They have exchanged words once already; those would have to be enough. He would remember her voice, the sound of her laughter, a few decades more, until it too left a hollow space in his mind where the lass used to be.

She looked up at him, in the arms of her husband and a grandson attached to her hip, her smile still as radiant, and her eyes asked one question.

Are ye happy?

Thorin thought of Erebor and of his sister and his nephews, and his Company, of everything that happened between the time he had turned his back on Loch and the time he returned to it, to the little burglar who stole the Heart of the Mountain and then, according to Dwalin, stole a heart entirely different (and it had taken Thorin some weeks to understand what he had meant by it). His people were safe, his family was whole as it would ever be with so much of it gone, and he was free now to put his own desires first, see an old friend, perhaps stay for tea if his presence was welcome… Perhaps stay a little longer, if life was merciful and the small Hobbit had truly found it in his gentle and far too kind heart to forgive Thorin on what was believed by most to have been the King's deathbed nine years past.

He dipped his head once, and then continued walking away.

Yes. I am.

 **~(TH\\.oOo./TH)~**

Asíra of Loch died four years later at the generous age of seventy four. An envelope found its way into the mailbox of Bag End on a chilly morning of early spring and it was Bilbo who put it before Thorin as the Dwarf broke his fast a second time. He opened it and read the news; it having come from a girl by the name of Alísa, the lass's granddaughter. She claimed they had met once before and Thorin's wondered if perhaps she was the young girl he saw playing in the stream on the day he came back to the house in the woods.

She died in sleep, surrounded by her family and one of her final wishes was for someone to tell him that she was glad he had found it in his heart to accept the joys life offered him. She passed into a better place in the home she had built, with her children and grandchildren near her, and felt no pain in death; simplly drew a breath and breathed no more. Such came to pass that the woman who briefly loved and was loved by a Dwarf King left the world, and Thorin hoped that he was not burdened with a longer life than his kinfolk, that he would not lose another lover to the cruel mistress that was time.

"What was she like?" Bilbo asked him when Thorin, later that day, burned the letter over a candle, saying a small prayer for her soul to pass safely onto wherever the souls of Men went after their death. The candle stood in the window, a habit he had taken up upon returning to Ered Luin more than forty years ago. Needless to say Bilbo was flabbergasted when Thorin helped himself to inviting every which stranger into his Hobbit's home, but over the decades the habit had become something of a religious practice, a tribute, a memento of a short but oh so warm summer.

Thorin looked at the small flame dancing with every of his breaths and said, "Like fire."

* * *

 _ **Notes:** And so ends the only fic I have ever marked as COMPLETE. So, kind of sweet, kind of bitter; made me sad at the end but also happy, because despite everything, they were not each other's first and they were not the last, but that doesn't make them any less important._

 _Awe, hell: who am I kidding? Proofreading this, I made myself cry a little this chapter and the second half of the last. Seriously, I have never written anything with SO MANY FEELS, and I think I broke mine a little. I put a lot of my heart and soul into it and the words opened a lot of old hurts that I was not prepared to deal with yet. It was a very personal piece that hit close to home with its themes but I am very, very happy with how it turned out._

 _Also, goodmother means mother-in-law, meaning the woman was Edrig's wife._

 _Yes. Yes, I put Bagginshield at the end. I couldn't not. Also, for the cave I used a reference: a Jon/Ygritte scene in Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire book 3: A Storm of Swords. It was a huge inspiration for that entire segment and I settled with it after rewriting the entire scene thrice without being satisfied. Hey, if GRR Martin can put Castle Oakenshield on the Wall, I can use some inspiration from his work as well. All rights going to their respective owners, of course :)) Thank you to both R.R.'s for the masterpieces you have shared with the world. They will be long remembered and celebrated._

 _Anyway, this was my little project and it came out better than I thought it would, to be honest. I hope you guys liked it and if you did (or even if you didn't) please leave a few words to tell it to me, or follow or favourite or whatever it is you wanna do, and I might see some of you in another of my fics! Thank you for reading!_

 _P.S.: In case any of you are wondering: no, Asíra is not a real name. At least to my knowledge. I asked my good friend Google and he said that no, this name does not exist and therefore has no meaning. However, Asíra is derived (by myself) from the name Oisín, which means "little deer". Deers symbolize gentleness, grace, innocence and peace._


End file.
